Bank Holiday Update

The world is currently fascinated with this year's Royal wedding, and both the Westminster and Holyrood Governments have declared that the day will be a national celebration marked with a public holiday.

The announcements by Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond, mean that for those who already take the Easter bank holidays off, there may be two consecutive bank holiday weekends. Businesses who intend to, or are obliged to allow staff to take the extra days off will be faced with a substantial loss of working time which may be very costly. It may prove to be particularly disruptive in the current economic climate when many businesses are facing tough times.

The announcement may have given UK workers the impression that they are entitled to the day off to participate in the Royal celebrations, but this is not necessarily the case.

Empire HR is encouraging businesses to think ahead about how they wish to approach the forthcoming celebration as it is not compulsory to shut up shop.

A national day will not automatically mean an extra day's holiday. Most businesses do not have to honour the new holiday (contracts should be checked). Despite this, many businesses will want to give their employees the day off as a gesture of goodwill.

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.

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 will have to book the day in accordance with the annual leave policy. Only employees whose contracts state that they are entitled to all public holidays would be entitled to the extra day off.