‘Seamus Says’ boils down the best bits from Legal Island’s live ‘Employment Law at 11’ webinar into straight-talking takeaways you can actually use. 

Seamus: The basics of it are the bank holidays. When it comes to holidays, an employer can dictate what days the employee has to take as regards their holidays. There might be closure periods, and the employee might put in for leave and it just mightn't be workable for the employer. But generally, the legal position is where you are sick on a holiday, you don't have to have that day counted as a holiday. You're entitled to take it on another date.

It depends on what your policy and procedure say about the holidays. Normally, the contract of employment will set out your holiday entitlement, and it will also set out what the bank holidays are.

Basic position for a full-time employee, they get 28 days as a minimum for a full-time employee, and you can include within those 28 days the bank holidays. It's up to you to decide as the company what bank holidays you're going to accept as formal holidays.

Lots of businesses work through bank holidays and don't close, but not everybody works in an office or in a bank or along those lines. It just depends on what the policy and the procedure are.

The general position is if you are ill on the day of the holiday, you're entitled to take the holiday at another time.

Christine: It's provided that you have reported as sick. You can't kind of come back in and retrospectively go, "Oh, by the way, on the 12th there I was very sick, and I need the 12 July holiday back". But if they've reported it . . .

Seamus:  Yes, they have to report it.

Christine: . . . by self-cert or doctor's note, they could be entitled to take 12 July at a later date then if that's within your holiday bank.

Seamus:  Yes. And depending on what's in the policy and procedure, yes.