Bank holidays in 2024: four things you need to know

Bank holidays have been somewhat chaotic for our calendars in recent years, given the major changes to the monarchy. Luckily, 2024 seems to bring stability and a return to routine. Here are four important things you need to know about bank holidays for 2024.

Most of the UK has eight permanent bank holidays each year: New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day, Spring Bank Holiday, Summer Bank Holiday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Traditionally, except for the festive bank holidays, these take place on a Monday.

Here’s all you need to know about the upcoming bank holidays in 2024.

1. There is no statutory right for employees to have bank holidays off work

Bank holidays are counted, in employment law terms, as a normal day’s holiday and so are part of an employee’s annual leave entitlement. Any right to time off depends on the terms of your employee contracts, and is not a statutory right for employees.

Employers can choose to express annual leave in their handbooks either as a total amount that includes bank holidays (so for a five-day a week worker on statutory minimum holidays, you would write it as 28 days), or you can express it as x days plus bank holidays.

You’d tend to use the ‘total amount’ method if you have a 365 operation like a retail or care setting and aren’t closed on bank holidays. In this case, workers need to request the bank holidays off specially, and may not get it, but as you identify they have the time accounted for in their annual leave allowance.

If you use the ‘x days plus bank holidays’ method, usually the business will be closed on bank holidays. If you’ve written in your employee contract ‘x days plus bank holidays’, and not specified the number of bank holiday days that this is in their entitlement, you will have to give it as an extra day’s leave this year.

2. There is no statutory right to extra pay when working on a bank holiday

If you require an employee to work on a bank holiday there is no legal requirement to enhance pay. It will depend on what is written in their contracts of employment.

3. How to handle an additional bank holidays

Although 2024 has returned to the standard eight bank holidays, it’s a good idea to keep in mind how to navigate occurrences where extra days are given. For example, last years coronation of King Charles III meant that there were three dates across May that were bank holidays, and there was only one full working week in that month. These instances needs to be accounted for and planning should take place as soon as possible in order not to miss deadlines. It’s also important to remember that many external services were unavailable on these dates too.

These long weekends have the potential to cause disruption to many businesses across the country.

It’s important to let your employees know what your company plans to do for these special bank holidays well in advance. Will employees be working as usual, are required to take it out of their annual leave entitlement, or are you going to give them it as an extra day off? The important thing is to review your employee contracts and communicate clearly with your employees what the plan is.

This may be a good time to add some wording on your company’s position should the government introduce additional bank holidays in the future.

4. Treat part-time workers the same as full-time workers

A part-time worker has the right not to be treated less favourably than a comparable full-time worker. The best practice is to pro-rata bank holiday allowances, irrespective of whether an employee normally works on the day a bank holiday falls.

Read more about calculating holiday allowance for part-time workers here.

Bank Holidays for 2024

Check out and bookmark these handy bank holiday calendars:

How many bank holidays in England and Wales in 2024?

How many bank holidays do employees living in Scotland get in 2024?

How many bank holidays do employees living in Northern Ireland get?

Next Steps

For support with reviewing your contract of employment, why not consider our HR & Employment Law Services? Our experts are available 24/7/365.