Government Consultation: Calculating holiday entitlement for part-year and irregular hours workers


13th January 2023

The government has launched a consultation addressing the issues arising from the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of Harpur Trust v Brazel. As a result of the Supreme Court ruling part-year workers are entitled to a larger holiday entitlement than part-time workers who work the same total number of hours across the year.

The consultation is designed to assist the government in addressing this disparity in order to ensure that holiday pay and entitlement received by workers is proportionate to the time they spend working. The proposal is to replace the 52 week reference period when weeks in which no remuneration is earned are ignored, with a 52 week reference period which includes weeks with no remuneration. The consultation also seeks to understand the implications of the judgment on different sectors including agency workers who have complex contractual arrangements.

Although there was an expectation that the unfairness to some individuals when the law is applied following the Supreme Court ruling may point to this being an area for legislative reform in the near future,  the timing of this consultation was completely unexpected.

Our guidance to date has been to make adjustments in line with the ruling to staff who are impacted.  However, although the law remains unchanged at the moment, some schools may now wish to consider adopting a wait and see approach pending the outcome of the consultation,  being aware that until the law is changed, liabilities will continue to be incurred.

Community and voluntary controlled maintained schools and PRUs should have regard to any direction provided by the local authority to ensure that there is a standardised approach to pay across the LA’s employees. Other maintained schools that have adopted the LA’s pay mechanisms would be advised to do the same

The consultation closes on 9 March 2023.

HR Customers can access a range of resources linked to the judgment in the Annual Leave>Guidance and Information website pages

Government Consultation: Calculating holiday entitlement for part-year and irregular hours workers

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