Your legal rights to extra pay if you work over Christmas | UK | News
Certain jobs will require workers to put in hours over Christmas, Boxing Day or New Years Day, or possibly all three upcoming bank holidays.
There is no legal right to take bank holidays off work, although you may be able to offset any time by having extra holiday or taking days in lieu, according to legal experts.
If you work in hospitality, such as a restaurant or hotel or you work in the NHS, the police or fire service then your contract may stipulate you work on bank holidays.
Some companies will choose to offer staff incentives to encourage them to work bank holidays, such as double or triple time, but this is not a legal requirement.
When a company expects you work bank holidays then you may find your contract includes extra leave.
Some offices shut down over Christmas and New Year, so you might not have to work, depending on your employer, but they may insist you have to set aside some of your annual leave to cover any non-bank holidays around the festive period.
According to Acas, an employer can include bank holidays in the statutory minimum 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday all UK employees get.
This is the same whether an employee works full time or part time.
If you are not sure whether bank holidays are included in your holiday entitlement then you need to check your employment contract.
Sometimes extra bank holidays are announced but whether or not you are entitled to those as extra days off will depend on your contract.
An employer can change when they want their employees to take holiday, so they can decide to shut an office over Christmas and tell their employees to use some of their holiday entitlement; this is even if in previous years the business was open over Christmas.
If an employer needs employees to take holiday, they should tell them at least twice as many days before as the amount of days they need them to take. This is calendar days, not working days.
For example, if they need employees to take two days of holiday, they should tell them at least four days before.
