Roots HR have released guidance about Easter falling early this year which may affect those whose leave years are April – March.
Root HR’s guidance says:
“You may have noticed that Easter falls early this year - the 4 day break from Good Friday to Easter Monday is from 25 to 28 March. Those of you whose annual leave years run from April – March will find therefore that that you have 10 bank/public holidays in the 2015/16 year and only 6 in the 2016/17 year.
Please do check your contract wording; the minimum statutory annual leave is 28 days per annum (including bank/public holidays) so if your contracts specify 20 days plus bank/public holidays (usually 8 days per annum) you would exceed the statutory holiday entitlement in 2015/16 (because this amounts to 10 days in the current year) and then end up breaching your statutory obligation in 2016/17 since your employees would only get 20 days plus 6 bank/public holidays next year. In these circumstances you will need to give your employees 2 extra days holiday in 2016/17.
You can require employees to use two days of the current leave year’s entitlement to cover the two bank holidays in March 2016 and then allow them two extra days to take as they wish in 2016/17. Technically you could ask employees to “even up” the entitlement by using two days from this year to cover next year’s shortfall, so that the 28 day statutory minimum entitlement is given in both years - but they don't have to accept this, in which case you would have to add a further 2 days to the entitlement in 2016/17 to reach the 28 day statutory minimum level. We are aware that, when this has happened previously, many clients deal with this in a relaxed way and treat the bank holidays simply as though there are 8 in each year. In the event of questions in respect of this, please contact us for advice.
Those of you with contract wording that says “28 days including bank/public holidays” will be unaffected by this and we recommend this wording for contracts in preference to the "20 days plus bank/public holidays" above.”