>Chris is a partner in the Employment Law Group of the Arthur Cox Belfast Office in Northern Ireland.
Chris has extensive experience dealing with both contentious and non-contentious employment law matters. Chris advises a range of employers on all aspects of employment law including executive appointments, severance, grievances, disciplinary issues and trade union matters. Chris has represented clients before the Industrial Tribunal, Fair Employment Tribunal and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland in employment litigation such as unfair dismissal, equality/discrimination and whistleblowing. Chris’ practice area includes advisory work and corporate transactions.
Are Employees Automatically Entitled to Public /Bank Holidays?
In accordance with the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, full-time employees in Northern Ireland are entitled to a minimum of 28 days of paid leave every year which may or may not include public / bank holidays. Any right for an employee to take paid leave on bank or public holidays should be detailed in the employee's terms of employment. The employee’s contract of employment should deal with whether public and bank holidays can be taken as paid leave or whether employees have the choice to work these dates at the normal pay rate. Some employers may choose to pay their employees overtime rates for working on bank or public holidays. However, there is no automatic statutory right to an enhanced rate of pay.
Employees with the contractual right to time off on bank and public holidays cannot be forced to work or disciplined for refusing to work on these days. However, an employee who does not have this contractual right to time off on bank and public holidays and refuses to work on these days could be subject to disciplinary action for unauthorised absence. In Northern Ireland, there are 10 bank holidays and public holidays. If an employer provides paid leave for an employee on a bank or public holiday, this may count towards the employee's minimum holiday entitlement depending on the terms included in their contract of employment.
For employees working part-time, it is important for employers to note that their annual leave should be calculated pro rata. Currently, this can be calculated as 5.6 times an employee's usual working week. By way of an example, this would equate to 22.4 days of annual leave for someone who works four days a week. Employers may choose to offer employees more annual leave days than is required under the legislation.
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