Due to working an agreed 4 day week (Monday to Friday) I will effectively "lose" 2 of this year's 8 Public Holidays (Good Friday & the Platinum Jubilee bank holiday in June). Am I entitled to "lieu days" for any of this lost entitlement? Everything else that is "Employment Related2 dropped by 20% when I went from a 5 to 4 day week back in January 2021. Serious comments only please.
Depends entirely upon your contract. Everybody on full-time hours is entitled to 28 days holiday per year at a minimum, including bank holidays. If this falls on a non-working day you will retain the holiday entitlement. If you are working 80% of full time hours then the amount of holiday will be pro-rata. There's also the issue that an extra bank holiday has been added to this year, it will depend upon your company if they effectively give you 29 days this year, or make you take it out of the 28.
It will depend on your Ts and Cs, obviously, but where I worked last, anyone who worked a reduced week had their total holiday entitlement reduced on a pro rata basis. eg. If full time hols = 25 days, plus 8 public holidays = total 33 days. Then part time, say 4 days = 33 days × 80% = 26.4 days. Then regardless of how the public holiday days fell, you always got the 26.4 days. If your pattern meant that there were only 6 public holes included, then your standard entitlement would be the remainder, 26.4 less 6 = 20.4 days.
In my company we’re given 30 days leave plus bank holidays. My team are all full time but work their hours over 4 days and none of them have Mondays off. This typically covers most bank holidays, however, for those occasions where a bank holiday falls on their days off during the week, they get their time back in lieu - but it’s officially calculated on a pro rata basis and they aren’t just given an extra day back. Although all my team work 4 day weeks, not all full time employees at the same grade do. Therefore, time back in lieu is calculated by dividing their total weekly hours by 5 and they get that amount credited to their annual leave balance. E.g 37 / 5 = 7.4 hours. It’s supposed to make it fair for those that don’t do their hours over 4 days and means every full time employee at the same grade gets the ‘same amount’ of time off on bank holidays.
