Extra bank holiday - Extra headache for employers?

This year will see an additional bank holiday on Tuesday 5th June to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The spring bank holiday has been moved to Monday 4th June to accompany it.

Whilst this extra holiday will no doubt please employees across the nation, the extra day off could cause operational and cost difficulties for employers. In addition to the impact of the extra bank holiday on internal operations, there is the effect on national economic growth to consider.

Although the Diamond Jubilee (as with the Royal wedding last April), could boost alcohol sales, touring and souvenir merchandising, economists have estimated that the extra bank holiday on 5 June could reduce Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the second quarter of the year by 0.5%.  A similar effect was experienced in June 2002 when an extra bank holiday was created for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee.

Contrary to popular belief, employees do not automatically have the right to paid time off on a bank holiday. Whether an employee is entitled to an additional day’s holiday will depend on the wording of their employment contract.

Where a contract of employment states that an employee is entitled to a certain number of days plus bank and public holidays, it is likely that they will be permitted to take 5th June off unless the contract refers only to the ‘usual’ or ‘8’ bank holidays.

Employees who are entitled to a certain number of days inclusive of bank and public holidays would not be entitled to an extra paid day off and would have to book it as part of their usual annual leave entitlement. Similarly, if the contract refers to a fixed amount of holidays and is silent on bank holidays altogether, there will be no right to have the extra day off.

Even where employees do not have contractual entitlement to paid time off on the additional bank holiday, employers may wish to consider providing this as a gesture of goodwill or provide time off in lieu if employees are required to work on that day.  It may be better to give employees the extra day off and accept the financial and organisational effects rather than lower morale in the long term.

With two bank holidays at the start of the week, employees will only need to book 3 days annual leave in order to gain a 9 day break from work and many employers have already received an influx of holiday requests for this period. As always, it is important to be fair and consistent in addressing annual leave requests and employers may even choose to implement a specific holiday request process for that particular week and consider requests either on a first come first served basis or on a departmental basis.

For more employment law advice regarding lay off, redundancy or unfair dismissal or to comment on this article please email Melanie Morton one of our employment law specialists