Calculating Annual Leave Entitlement

Calculating Annual Leave Entitlement

Annual Leave Entitlement

The Annual Leave entitlement for an employee will be stated in the contract of employment.

Annual Leave entitlement is based on the type of contract issued, and the salary band of the contract as follows:

 

Contract Type  First 5 years' of continuous service After 5 years' continuous service 

Professional Services

   
Bands 1 to 5 (to pt 19)  21 days  26 days

Band 5 (from pt 20) to Band 6 (to pt 27)

 23 days      28 days
Band 6 (pt 28 onwards) to Band 7 (pt 34)  25 days  30 days 
Band 8 and Band 9  31 days  31 days

 

Where an employee moves into the contribution points for the salary band for their job the leave entitlement continues to be the entitlement that relates to the salary band for the job.

 Where an employee reaches 5 years' continuous service during the holiday year, they will be entitled to the increase in their Annual Leave Entitlement on a pro-rata basis for the rest of that holiday year.

Example: An employee reaches 5 years' service in Band 3 on 1st February. There are 6 months remaining in the year, and so the employee will be entitled to an additional 2.5 days Annual Leave in that year, and then an additional 5 days' leave from the start of the next holiday year.

 Contract Type   Annual Leave Entitlement*
 Standard Academic Contract (AC1-AC4)  36 days
 Teaching Focused Contract (AC1-AC4)  36 days
 Senior Staff, e.g. Professors, Directors, Heads of School  31 days 

*Not increased when service exceeds 5 years*

In addition to the leave above, employees are entitled to 8 days' paid Bank Holidays per year, and 3 days' paid University closure days. Part-time employees will receive a pro-rated annual leave entitlement (see below).

An employees' continuous service with previous employers may be counted towards Annual Leave entitlement under the terms of the Redundancy Modification Order.

 

Calculating Bank Holiday Allowance for Part-Time Staff

 

A full time member of staff is entitled to 8 bank holidays and 3 university closure days per year, totaling 11 days. Part-time members of staff are entitled to these 11 days, but on a pro-rated basis to match their FTE. So a member of staff who works a 0.5FTE will be entitled to 0.5 FTE of 11, or 5.5 days bank holiday and university closure days leave per year.

However, the days of the week the part-time member of staff work mean they could potentially be treated unequally unless they receive a pro-rated bank holiday and university closure allowance:

Example: In a typical leave year there will be 6 bank holidays that fall on a Monday, with the rest falling on other days of the week. A part-time employee who regularly works MTWT will receive these 6 days as bank holidays as the University is closed each day and they are not required to attend for work. The employee will then not work Friday as usual.

In the case of an employee who works TWTF, there would be 6 bank holidays that fall on a Monday on their non-working day.

The employee cannot take these as bank holidays as they are non-working days, and so would then be at a detriment to their colleagues as over the full year they would not be able to take as much Annual Leave as others.

In order to ensure that all employee receive an equal holiday allowance, for part-time employees bank holiday and university closure days are therefore converted into the amount of days/hours the employee would receive on a pro rata basis and given as additional annual leave. The employee will then need to book as annual leave working days that fall as bank holidays, but all part-time employees will be entitled to an equal amount of additional leave equivalent to their Full Time Equivalent (FTE).

Example: An employee works TWTF each week for 25 hours a week total. An equivalent full time employee would receive 11 days bank holiday and university closure days’ allowance, or 81.4 hours. This is pro-rated to 55 hours for the employee. (81.4 ÷ 37 hours, x 25 hours). In the employee’s working pattern, there are 6 bank holidays or closure days that fall on a Monday, and 5 that fall on other days of the week.

The employee works 6.25 hours a day, and so will need to reserve 31.25 hours from this additional leave entitlement to cover the bank holidays and closure days that fall in their working pattern. Their 55 pro rata hours leave entitlement for bank holidays is reduced by 31.25 to 23.75 hours. The employee then has 23.75 hours to use to compensate them for the 6 Bank Holidays they are not able to take as they fall on the employee’s non-working day. The employee can use these hours to book annual leave as they would do normally.