The statutory minimum holiday entitlement in the UK under the Working Time Regulations is 28 days (5.6 weeks) per year for full-time workers. Employers can choose to include bank holidays as part of this entitlement.
Usually, there are a total of 8 bank holidays each year in England and Wales. However, because Easter 2025 falls between 18 April 2025 (Good Friday) and 21 April 2025 (Easter Monday), there will only be 7 bank holidays between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.
This means that, if an employer’s holiday year runs from April to March, they should review their employment contracts and policies to check if the 7 bank holidays would result in a shortfall. This will depend on the wording used, and mean that employees would be entitled to an additional day of holiday.
Read on for more information…
Your holiday year runs from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. Your employment contracts and/or policies state that employees are entitled to “20 days of holiday plus all bank holidays”.
| Number | Date | Bank Holiday |
| 1 | 1 April 2024 | Easter Monday |
| 2 | 6 May 2024 | Early May Bank Holiday |
| 3 | 27 May 2024 | Spring Bank Holiday |
| 4 | 26 August 2024 | Summer Bank Holiday |
| 5 | 25 December 2024 | Christmas Day |
| 6 | 26 December 2024 | Boxing Day |
| 7 | 1 January 2025 | New Year’s Day |
| - | 18 April 2025 | Good Friday (outside of the April to March holiday year) |
Total: 20 days of holiday + all 7 bank holidays = 27 days of holiday
This is below the statutory minimum holiday entitlement of 28 days. Therefore, you need to offer employees an additional day of holiday day before 31 March 2025 to comply with the statutory minimum entitlement and avoid risking claims for unlawful deductions from wages.
Your holiday year runs from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. Your employment contracts and/or policies state that employees are entitled to “28 days of holiday (including bank holidays)”.
In this scenario, you do not need to take any further action, as employees will still get their full entitlement of 28 days; it will just be broken down into 21 days of holiday leave plus 7 bank holidays, which complies with the statutory minimum entitlement.
Alex Payton, comments: Employers with a holiday year running from 1 April to 31 March should check their employment contracts and policies to make sure they aren’t caught out by this. If their employees would only receive 27 days of holiday, they should offer an additional day of holiday before 31 March to avoid risking claims for unlawful deductions from wages. A longer-term solution (to avoid this happening again) would be to amend employment contracts and policies so that holiday entitlement is expressed as being 28 days of holiday (including bank holidays).
If you have any questions in respect of holiday entitlement and pay, or need help amending your employment contracts or policies, please contact a member of the team here.
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