Holiday Pay

All employees including household staff have a legal minimum holiday entitlement. As a domestic staff employer you must state your employee’s holiday allowance in the contract of employment and administer holiday pay where due.

A full-time employee is entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks (28 days) of paid annual leave. This includes the 8 UK bank holidays. Employers can choose to offer more than the legal minimum if they wish. The same rules apply for full-time temporary employee’s.

Part-time workers are entitled to at least 5.6 weeks paid holiday, but this will amount to fewer than 28 days.

For example, if they work 3 days a week, they must get at least 16.8 days’ leave a year (3 × 5.6).

People working irregular hours (like shift workers or term-time workers) are entitled to paid time off for every hour they work.

Use our holiday entitlement calculator to work out a part-time employee’s leave.

Bank holidays are included in the 28 days. Therefore, if your employee were to take a bank holiday off it would be deducted from their annual leave entitlement. If a part time employee does not normally work on a day which a bank holiday would fall, then the bank holiday does not affect their entitlement. 

If you require your employee to work on a bank holiday, your employee will be entitled to take that days annual leave at a later date.

Please note that whilst Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee and State Funeral are national bank holidays, there is no statutory entitlement to time off. This should be agreed upon by the employer and employee.

We recommend that holiday is taken as it has been accrued but this is ultimately at the employer’s discretion. Your employee’s  holiday will accrue from their first day of work.

If your employee is leaving but has not taken all their accrued holiday, this must be paid in lieu and reflected on the final payslip. Alternatively, if the employee has overtaken any of their accrued holiday then the employer may have the right to deduct this from the final payslip, please speak to our HR team for further details.

Once you subscribe to our Stafftax payroll service we can calculate your employee’s holiday entitlement if you require further assistance. Our HR team will write this into your bespoke contract of employment and the payroll team will reflect any holiday pay on your employee’s payslips. Plus if your employee leaves we will work out if any untaken holiday pay is due or if any money is owed due to overtaken holiday.

Speak to a Stafftax advisor today or alternatively get going and set up your domestic staff payroll now.