The government proposes to have an online calculator to enable minimum holiday entitlement to be readily calculated for employees who work for less than five days a week and/or whose holiday year begins at different times of the year.
Payment in lieu of the additional 0.8 weeks will be allowed to continue until 1 April 2009 but thereafter will not be permitted. Under the legislation, partial days’ holiday need not be rounded up to the nearest full day but, in practice, employers are likely to find it makes administrative and employee relations sense to round up entitlement to the nearest half day (rounding down of the statutory minimum is, of course, not permitted).
Some or all of the additional holiday may be carried over, to the following leave year only, by agreement of the employer.
As a result of EEF lobbying, employers that already meet the full requirements of the regulations (giving at least 5.6 weeks’ holiday - including any bank holidays - without payment in lieu - except on termination - and any carry over permitted only to the following year) will not be covered by the new regulations at all, as long as they continue to meet those requirements.
Unfortunately, the way the government has chosen to implement this EEF proposal is only to exempt those employers that already provide 5.6 weeks or more holiday as at 1 October 2007. This means that, to prove in years to come that the regulations do not apply to you as an employer, you will need to have records to show what holiday entitlement you provided as at 1 October 2007.