Casual worker holiday – what now?
16 January 2023
With the latest consultation released regarding holiday pay, some of you may be wondering where we currently stand with the legislation.
If you haven’t heard, the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is seeking views on potential changes to holiday entitlement calculations. This is in relation to part year or irregular hours workers as a result of the Harpur Trust v Brazel Supreme Court verdict.
The consultation proposes a 52 week reference period, similar to how holiday pay is calculated, to assess entitlement to the amount of leave. This aims to simplify holiday pay calculations and make the entitlement to leave proportionate to the amount of the year worked.
But, and it’s a big one, the clarification of the law as provided by the Supreme Court is what is considered compliant right now. We don’t know yet when the new law will be passed, if changes will be made, or if there will be any retrospective provisions included. Therefore, right now businesses should be making steps to be compliant with the law as it stands and ensure part year workers entitlements are not pro-rated.
With the changes proposed, and the implications of Harpur Trust v Brazel, weekly payroll data will be a key principle of the information required. If you are not currently capturing this data, for the current legislation as well as the proposed changes, we encourage you to review processes and seek to make positive changes.
Keep an eye out for our survey releasing soon to allow you to provide feedback on any part of the consultation. This will feed into our response to BEIS as a representative of the payroll profession and our members. Unfortunately, all our think tanks are currently full, if we have capacity to add any further dates we will announce those as soon as we are able to, thank you all who have registered interest.
The consultation closes on 9 March 2023.
Information provided in this news article may be subject to change. Please make note of the date of publication to ensure that you are viewing up to date information.