Yes, although not yet for all bank holidays (unless you have agreed to pay for time off on bank holidays under your own employment contracts with an employee). The statutory requirement for four weeks' paid holiday has been extended, with effect from 1 October 2007, to 4.8 weeks (equivalent to 24 days' paid holiday for anyone who works a five-day week). From 1 April 2009 it will be extended again, to 5.6 weeks (equivalent to 28 days for anyone who works a five-day week).
According to the ready-reckoner on the website of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - formerly the DTI (www.berr.gov.uk), your full-time employees could be entitled to anything between 4.07 and 4.8 weeks of paid holiday in 2007-08, depending on when your leave year starts, and to anything between 4.8 and 5.2 weeks in the following year. Part-timers - who are entitled to paid holiday on a pro-rata basis - will also be getting parts of days, so it makes sense to develop a policy for dealing with them. The options are:
- you can round up (but not down);
- you can carry the new days forward (but everyone must take at least four weeks in the leave year);
- you can give payment in lieu of statutory leave (but only by agreement, and only until 1 April 2009. After April 2009, payment in lieu can only be made on termination (although payment in lieu of any leave over and above the statutory leave can be made if the employees contract of employment provides for it).
- you can devise a system for late starting or early finishing to get the part-days out of the way.
Those employers who already gave paid bank holidays as well as four weeks' paid leave are not required to increase workers' entitlements - providing that all employees benefit.
