If your holiday year is aligned to the financial year (April-March), then please be aware of this notice.

Due to the way in which the Easter bank holidays have fallen this year, two Easter breaks will have occurred during the April 2015-March 2016 leave year. Therefore, for the coming holiday year 2016/17 there will only be six bank holidays, as opposed to the usual eight.

Employees are legally entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ annual leave (e.g 28 days’ for employees working a five-day week). For most businesses, this includes 20 days leave plus 8 bank holidays.

Given that this year’s Easter holiday and next year’s Easter holiday have fallen so early in the year, there will be a deficit of 2 days bank holidays in the holiday year 2016/17.

You should be aware that providing less than 28 days total would be a breach of the working time rules. Employers in this position will need to top up employee’s holiday entitlement by two days for this coming year.

Unfortunately, given that that extra bank holidays have already been taken by staff members, employers will not be able to reclaim those 2 holiday extra days taken.

If you wish to update your employment contracts going forward, we can draft a clause tailored to your business. Please note that an employer that imposes a change without agreement will be in breach of contract.

We again stress that this only impacts business that have a holiday year running from April-March, all other holiday year calendars will be unaffected.

If you have any queries regarding the above, please get in touch with the People Business team, we will be happy to help.