Arranging and recording leave

Annual leave must be arranged in advance and taken by mutual agreement between the employee and their line manager, subject to operational and service delivery needs.

Subject to operational requirements, individuals may be required to take annual leave out of term time or where a unit or department closes for specific holiday periods or some other significant reason.

How much leave to take

When taking leave full time employees should deduct 7.4 hours (7 hours 24 minutes) of leave for each day off, either their annual leave or bank holiday entitlement, whichever is appropriate.

Part-time employees

Part-time employees should deduct leave hours from their leave entitlement equivalent to the daily hours they would normally work on the day(s) on which they take leave.

Example

A part-time employee works 30 hours per week in the following pattern:

Monday to Wednesday seven hours per day and Thursday and Friday 4.5 hours per day.

If the employee took leave on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday they would use seven hours leave for a full day.

If the employee took leave on a Thursday or Friday they would use 4.5 hours leave.

This applies irrespective of whether the hours are being taken for annual leave or a bank or public holiday. 

Depending on the part time worker’s working pattern, it may be useful when recording leave to divide the Bank Holiday entitlement by the number of Bank Holiday days in the leave year and deduct this number from the full entitlement each time a Bank Holiday is taken.

It may be possible, subject to operational need and line manager approval, for a part time employee to attend work on a different day of the week to their normal attendance pattern as an alternative to deducting time for a Bank or Public Holiday from their entitlement where, for example they normally work a full day.

Bank holidays

We will normally close its offices on recognised bank or public holidays, except where there is a need to maintain essential services.  Employees must ensure they retain sufficient hours to cover the time they will require in order to take the day off.

Entitlements and time taken off on each bank holiday must be recorded on your leave record for (full and part time).

Recording your annual leave

All leave entitlements and deductions are recorded on a Leave Record.

Leave Record – Full time/Days (electronic version)

Leave Record – Part time/Hours (electronic version)

Leave requests by the employee and authorisation by a line manager can be done electronically by email between the people concerned.

Managers should make sure that recorded leave authorised for their team or unit etc is kept up to date in line with their service’s requirements on Leave Record sheets.

All staff, without exception, are required to record both their annual leave entitlement and bank holiday leave on their personal Leave Record, noting the relevant bank holiday dates appropriately.

The Leave Record also makes provision to record any Flexi time/other types of leave taken.

Buy more annual leave

Any additional annual leave purchased should be recorded on the Leave Record in line with the Additional Annual Leave Purchase Scheme.

Part-time employees 

Part-time employees can use the calculator provided on the Leave Record to convert decimal minutes to ordinary minutes to ease recording of leave taken. 

For example, an employee who works 20 hours 45 minutes per week does three 7 hrs 15 minute shifts, this converts to 20.75 decimal hours and minutes for a week, 7.25 decimal hours per day. Therefore, the employee would need to deduct 7.25 hours from their leave entitlement when taking a day’s leave.

Full-time employees

Full time (37 hours per week) employees have the option to complete their leave record sheet using days or hours. An employee who records their leave in days needs to deduct 7:24 (7.4 hours) from both their leave record and their flexi sheet when a day’s leave is taken. 

If the leave is recorded in hours then there is the flexibility to apply the actual number of hours of leave taken, which is beneficial where 37 hours are worked over a different working pattern to the standard 5 x 7.4 hour, for example where an employee has a working pattern of Monday to Thursday 9.15 hours, and zero hours on Friday.

The actual number of hours taken as leave can be applied to both the flexi sheet and the leave record when a deduction for leave occurs.

Combination of jobs

If you have a combination of jobs, then these jobs should be treated separately. Leave entitlement calculated for each job using the pro rata principle. A separate leave records should be kept for each job.