Some businesses have a holiday year for their employees which run from 1^st April – 31^st March and this year is a ‘Double Easter’.

If you recognise bank holidays as fixed holidays for your employees, i.e. employees are not required to work on a bank holiday, the timing of Easter this year, means you will potentially be awarding an extra day of leave in the 2023/ 2024 holiday year, but there will be a potential shortfall in 24/25.

So how does this work?

The law around holiday states that you must provide a minimum 5.6 working weeks’ leave each year. This is 28 days including bank / public holiday for full -time employees and the pro-rata entitlement for part-time employees.

This year, Good Friday falls on 29th March 2024 so this would be included in the current 2023 / 2024 bank holidays.

If we look back over April 2023 – March 2024, this means that there were 9 bank holidays – not including the King’s Coronation Day on 8^th May 2023 – as detailed below:

This means that next year, 1^st April 2024 – 31^st March 2025, there will be only seven bank holidays.

Where your holiday entitlement is 5.6 weeks only in the holiday year, this means that in order to comply with holiday legislation, you will have to award an additional day’s holiday in the next holiday year.

If your holiday entitlement is in excess of the statutory minimum, there is still a shortfall in their holiday which is a potential breach of contract. This may be questioned by employee’s and although the risk is low as you are awarding more than the statutory minimum, you may wish to consider awarding an additional day’s holiday in the next holiday year.

Please remember that for part-time employees, their holiday must be pro-rata’d to the full-time equivalent.

Please contact the HR team at advo at advohr@advo.co.uk if you would like further advice.