The holiday entitlement calculator is available for use online after being removed earlier this year
17 December 2019
After a brief hiatus, the holiday entitlement calculator is now available to use again and can be located here. It was previously withdrawn for amendment as a result of the outcomes of various tribunal court cases that focused on the topic of holiday pay over the course of the past year.
Due to the increase in the popularity of using ‘gig’ workers and employing people on a zero hours basis and a general shift in the nature of working patterns, the concept of holiday pay is no longer a simple and straight forward one and a variety of factors need to be considered before calculating the entitlement that a worker is entitled to.
Updated guidance has been published, and there is a caveat within it that states that it is intended to aid the understanding of statutory holiday entitlement calculations, but is not exhaustive and cannot be used to provide definitive answers to individual queries. The advice given is to seek legal advice or to contact ACAS in the event of any uncertainty.
The guidance discusses calculating the statutory holiday entitlement for people who work fixed days, those who work fixed / compressed hours, people who work on a casual or irregular basis or who have annualized hours and how to calculate entitlement for shift workers. A major change is that zero hours workers will accrue holiday entitlement based on the dates of their contract and not on the total of the hours or weeks that are worked within that contract.
The document explains how to calculate holiday entitlement for each of the scenarios listed above, where people start with or leave a company part way through the holiday year, and even where they do both in the space of a leave year.
There is separate guidance relating to calculating the pay that somebody should receive in relation to their holiday. Where somebody has fixed hours, the calculation is simple, and the employee is entitled to the equivalent of a week’s pay. Where somebody performs shift work, or has no fixed hours, the calculations get somewhat more complex, as per below:
Fixed hours and fixed pay (full or part time) =
A week's pay is calculated based on how much a worker gets for a week's work
Shift work with fixed hours (full or part time) =
A week's pay is calculated on the average number of weekly fixed hours a worker has worked in the previous 12 weeks, at their average hourly rate
No fixed hours (casual work, including zero-hours contracts) =
A week's pay is calculated based on the worker's average pay from the previous 12 weeks (only counting weeks in which they were paid)
The average rate should be taken over the last 12 weeks but where there is a week with no pay, this should be discarded, and the count should go back another week until a full 12 weeks that include pay are considered. Where a worker has been employed for less than 12 weeks, the advice given is to use the average pay rates for the full weeks they have worked.
CIPP comment
The CIPP welcomes the new holiday entitlement calculator and also the guidance surrounding the calculations behind it and the advice relating to the calculation of holiday pay.
Due to the upcoming reforms to the calculation of holiday pay which will take effect in April 2020, obviously the calculations will change shortly but no further guidance on the topic has been published at the time of writing.
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