Nanny Holiday Entitlement

Over the past few days I have noticed that parents on various internet forums have been asking about how much holiday their nanny gets.

In the UK we have Statutory Holiday Entitlement which means that all employees get 5.6 weeks of paid holiday per year at a minimum.

There can be confusion about how this affects part-time workers, such as a nanny who works 3 days a week.   So to help, take a look at the table below for a quick way of seeing how much statutory holiday your nanny should be getting.  You CAN NOT give less holiday than statutory entitlement, so you will need to decide what to do about fractional parts of a day.  Rounding up to the nearest whole day is a nice thing to do.   Otherwise if you are dealing in parts of a day, then it may be better to calculate holiday in Hours.   It may also be better to calculate in Hours if your nanny works different hours on different days.

UK Statutory Holiday Entitlement

Bank/Public Holidays

An employer can decide if Bank/Public holidays are to be taken off as part of annual leave or if the nanny needs to work those days, or if they will be paid days off in addition to annual leave.

When a nanny only works 3 days a week, Tuesday to Thursday it can be confusing about Bank/Public Holidays.  Very few bank/public holidays fall on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  Most bank holidays are on a Monday.  Good Friday is always a Friday.  However other bank/public holidays vary in the day of the week because they are a specific date, such as New Years Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day.  Then there are also special holidays like the Queens Diamond Jubilee we had on 5 June 2012.  If you look at the holidays list on Direct.Gov you can find out the dates of  holidays over the next couple of years.  You then need to convert those dates to day of the week using a calendar, or using an online date to day calculator.

Calculating Holiday In Hours

To calculate holiday in hours rather than days, use the formula:

Hours per week * 5.6

That works if the nanny is working the same number of hours each week.  So for example a nanny who works 10 hours on Mon, Tue, Wed and 5 hours on Thursday, they work a total of 35 hours a week.   35 * 5.6 = 196 Hours.    Then when the nanny takes holiday on a Wednesday and Thursday, you would deduct 10+5 = 15 hours, from the annual holiday entitlement.

Remember as the employer you can dictate when your nanny takes holiday.  You approve or decline holiday requests.  It is good practice to have requests for holiday made in writing (or e-mail) and that you respond to the request in the same way, then both you and your nanny have a record of the holiday request and the action: approved or declined.

In the past many nannies working a 5 day week have had in their contracts that they get 4 weeks plus bank holidays off.   This does still work for a nanny working Mon-Fri but it does not work in other circumstances, which is why the 5.6 weeks calculation is used (employment legislation was changed in October 2007).

Nannies these days can often work part-time, so a  nanny who works 3 days a week (Tuesday to Thursday) is not going to have very many bank/public holidays falling on a working day.  So 4 weeks plus bank holidays could mean 3*4=12 + 3 (New Years Day, Xmas, Boxing Day) = 15 Days.  Where as now, it is 3 * 5.6 = 16.8 days.

A nanny working 5 days (Mon-Fri) used to get 4 weeks plus bank/public holidays – so 20 days plus usually 8 bank/public holidays, so 28 days.    Now they get 5 * 5.6 = 28 days.  No difference.

The change in 2007 to the 5.6 weeks calculation means that part-time workers do not lose out when it comes to calculating statutory holiday entitlement due to them not working on a particular day of the week (such as a Monday) when a lot of bank holidays occur.

I hope that makes sense.  If you are struggling to work out how much holiday your nanny is entitled to, please do post in the comments and I will try to answer your query.