Supreme Court Ruling Impacts Holiday Entitlement

The case of the Harpur Trust v Brazel saw a music teacher on a zero-hours part-year contract bring proceedings against her place of work around how her holiday allowance and pay was calculated. As a result, the Supreme Court recently ruled that employees who only work for part of the year (e.g., term-time & zero hours workers), should not have their holiday pay or holiday entitlement pro-rated and instead should receive the same entitlement as their colleagues working all year round.

This ruling affects the calculation of annual leave and holiday pay entitlements under the following types of contracts:

  • Term-time only
  • Seasonal workers
  • Zero hours workers (bank/casual contracts)

Holiday pay should now be calculated based on the average weekly pay in the 52 weeks prior to the start of the period of annual leave they are taking, and all employees are now entitled to 5.6 weeks of holiday.

Many of the organisations we work with could be impacted by this new ruling and we’re here to support them in implementing these new changes. We’ll be factoring these calculations into new tender bids and new financial year budget calculations going forward.

Joe Parfitt – Managing Partner, Education