Royal Wedding public holidays

The Government has announced a public holiday on 29 April 2011 to mark the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Many employees assume that, as it will be a bank holiday, they will be entitled to take this day as paid leave. In fact, employees do not have an automatic right to paid leave on bank holidays and it will depend on the wording of their employment contract.

The only legal obligation on an employer is to allow their workers the minimum annual leave laid down in the Working Time Regulations 1998 (28 days for a full-time worker). Where an employment contract provides for "twenty days holiday plus bank holidays", then the employee will be entitled to the royal wedding in addition to the usual eight bank holidays. Where the employment contract simply states that the employee is entitled to "twenty eight days holiday per year", there will be no such contractual entitlement. This will also be the position where contracts of employment specify particular bank holiday dates.

Whilst some employers might be willing to grant staff an additional day's holiday, others might struggle to do so for financial, organisational or political reasons so they would be wise to check employees' contracts of employment.

For more information contact Victoria Bunnell on 0115 988 6734 or email vbunnell@andersonssolicitors.co.uk.