Royal Public Holiday - Are your staff entitled to the day off?

The world is currently fascinated with next year’s Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and Westminster and Holyrood governments have both declared that the big day planned for 29th April next year will be a national celebration and marked with a public holiday.

The announcements by Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond, means there will be two consecutive bank holiday weekends resulting in millions of employees working a three-day week. This substantial loss of working time will be costly for every business but it may prove to be particularly disruptive in the current economic climate when businesses are facing tougher times.

Mr Cameron and Mr Salmond’s declaration of an additional public holiday in 2011, may have given UK workers the impression that they are entitled to the day off to join in the Royal celebrations with the rest of the nation, however this is not the case.

Leading Aberdeen-based HR and employment law firm, Empire HR, is encouraging businesses to think ahead about how they wish to approach the forthcoming celebration in the workplace as it is not compulsory to shut up shop.

According to Empire HR, a national day will not automatically mean an extra days holiday. Companies do not have to honour the new holiday and employees should refer to their contract of employment to check their holiday entitlement. However, since the wedding will be an historic and momentous occasion, it may be mean spirited if a company doesn’t join in with the celebration and honour the public holiday.

A similar situation arose with the extra public holiday granted for the millennium. At the time a tribunal case considered contractual rights to holiday entitlement and ruled that unless it was clearly stated in the contract of employment, the employee would not be granted an additional day’s pay.

CEO of Empire HR, Steve Cook, is urging managers to examine the company approach to public holidays. He said; “Many contracts of employment state an employee is entitled to a fixed number of public holidays. Anyone who has a fixed number of public holidays written into their contract will not be entitled to the additional day off. As a result, anyone wishing to take the day off would have to book the day in accordance with their company annual leave policy. “Only employees whose contracts state the employee is entitled to all public holidays would be entitled to the extra day off. Of course it would be open to generous employers to give all employees an additional day off regardless of their contract terms.”

Empire HR provide commercially focused employment law and HR support service including a telephone advice line, HR Consultancy, employment tribunal insurance and health & safety support for businesses across Scotland. Empire HR can assist businesses on all aspects of holiday entitlement. For further information, please contact Empire HR on 01224 701383



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