As we approach the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations at the beginning of June, we thought it would be helpful to revisit the rules regarding bank holidays for both full and part time employees. The extra bank holiday on Friday 3 June is great news but here’s a handy reminder of your contractual obligations to employees as to whether they are entitled to take the extra day off.

Businesses don’t have to offer bank holidays by law, but the most common practice is to include these within the statutory 28 days that a full-time employee is entitled to per annum (so this would be 20 days of annual leave and the usual 8 bank holidays). Some companies choose to offer these in addition to the 28 days, which makes for 36 days leave overall.  



The first thing to do is check your employee contracts and/or handbook. The wording used is really important as this will determine if employees are entitled to the extra bank holiday or not this year.

If the contract/handbook states that an employee is entitled to ’20 days holiday plus bank holidays’, they are entitled to the extra bank holiday because the number of bank holiday days hasn’t been explicitly stated as 8.

If, however, the contract/handbook says ’28 days or 5.6 weeks including bank holidays’, the employee isn’t entitled to the bank holiday as the number of days has been specified as a total figure. The same is the case if the contract/handbook states ’20 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays’ because again, the total number of days has been specified.

Regardless of what your contracts or handbook state, most employers will be giving employees the additional bank holiday, but the main thing to remember is that this needs to be fairly applied for all employees, including those who are part time. For part-time employees, we would recommend giving a pro rata holiday entitlement to ensure that there is no risk of unfair treatment.

Get in touch with us if you have any queries about holiday calculations or contract wording, we would love to hear from you!