Draft Regulations have been published this month which propose various amendments to the Working Time Regulations SI 1998/1833 to ensure that workers are able to take more paid holiday by making the four weeks statutory holiday entitlement additional to time off for bank and public holidays. As it currently stands, employers can include the eight such public holidays within this period.
To rectify this, the Government has carried out an initial period of consultation to extend the statutory entitlement to 28 days (5.6 weeks) for full-time workers. This works by adding these eight days to the current statutory 20. Those working part-time would get this extra leave on a pro-rata basis. For example, anyone working a 2.5 day week would get an extra four days annual leave. As these proposals exceed the working time Directive 2003/88/EC, it is likely that any staff qualifying for this extra leave will be able to carry it over into the following year or sell some or all of it back to the employer.
The Government is aiming to introduce these proposals in two stages. The first increase in entitlement will be to a maximum of 24 days (4.8 weeks), which will apply from 1 October 2007, whilst the second will depend on the feedback from the consultation, but could be October 2008.
