Calculating annual leave entitlement for your Term Time only staff

You will have to have been away on your holidays to the planet Spod not have noticed that the case of Brazel vs Harpur Trust was finalised at the Supreme Court at the end of July.

This case has been making headlines since August 2019 when the Court of Appeal ruled that Mrs Brazel could expect to receive 5.6 weeks annual leave as a term time only, zero hours employee of the school in which she taught music as a peripatetic teacher.

We now know that all term time only i.e. staff who work part year, are entitled to 5.6 weeks and we can no longer use 12.07% of hours worked to calculate annual leave.

So how is this calculated?

Where someone has a contract to work specific hours each week, this is quite straight forward. You take a weeks’ pay and give then 5.6 weeks of that pay as holiday pay when they take annual leave. You can fix holiday’s by giving twice the amount of notice of the leave you wish them to take. For example:

If Fred has holiday as follows; 1 week at Easter, 2 weeks in August, 1 week in December and 1.6 weeks in January. His employer will now go back and pay him his contracted week’s pay for each week he is on fixed annual leave.

If your term time only staff receive their holiday pay by you adding it to their 38 week term time only contract and then you give then 12 equal instalments, you are now need to add 5.6 weeks.

What should we do now?

Identify how many staff you have that are term time only?

Discuss with them what steps you are going to take and why.

Issue new contracts

For those who work atypical hours (i.e. zero hours) keep records of hours worked, weeks pay received and what holiday has been paid.

If we can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to call us on 01527 909436.