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Introduction to this document

Easter bank holiday issue letter

If your holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March, you may encounter an issue with staff paid annual leave in some holiday years because of how Easter can fall.

Statutory requirements

Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, workers are entitled to at least 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave, equating to 28 days for a full timer (calculated pro rata for part timers). This entitlement can - but doesn’t have to - include the bank and public holidays, of which there are usually eight per year in England and Wales.

Easter holidays

Although Good Friday and Easter Monday both normally fall in April each year, occasionally, one or both of Good Friday and Easter Monday can fall in March. This means that, if your holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March, these days may straddle two holiday years, or you could end up with two Good Fridays and two Easter Mondays falling in one holiday year and then none falling in the following holiday year. If you only provide statutory minimum paid annual leave entitlement which includes bank holidays, it means your workers may potentially face a one-day or two-day shortfall in that statutory minimum in a particular holiday year. This issue doesn’t affect you though if you have a different holiday year, such as the calendar year, and neither does it impact on statutory rights if you already provide more than the statutory minimum paid annual leave entitlement in each holiday year, e.g. five weeks plus bank holidays.

Letter contents

If you need it, you can use our Easter Bank Holiday Issue Letter to try to resolve the problem. It sets out your holiday year and the employee’s current annual leave entitlement, including bank holiday entitlement, and goes on to explain the problem with how the Easter bank holidays fall in specific holiday years. There are then two optional paragraphs. The first paragraph is for use where paid annual leave entitlement is, say, “28 days inclusive of eight bank holidays”. It asks the employee to agree to temporarily vary their employment contract so that, in one holiday year, their entitlement will be inclusive of nine (or ten) bank holidays and, in the next holiday year, it will be inclusive of seven (or six) bank holidays. However, if their contract simply says their entitlement is “28 days inclusive of [all] bank holidays”, you won’t need to use our letter as their contract wording already covers the issue. The second paragraph is for use where paid annual leave entitlement is, say, “20 days plus eight bank holidays” or “20 days plus [all] bank holidays”. It asks the employee to temporarily vary their employment contract so that, in one holiday year, their entitlement will be 19 (or 18) days plus nine (or ten) bank holidays and, in the next holiday year, their entitlement will be 21 (or 22) days plus seven (or six) bank holidays, i.e. it’s effectively asking them to agree to carry over a day or two of “ordinary” annual leave from one holiday year to the next to solve the Easter bank holiday issue and so ensure they receive the same overall annual leave entitlement (28 days) in each of the two holiday years.