Calculating holiday for term-time only staff
Under the provisions of the Working Time Regulations 1998, employees must receive at least 5.6 weeks annual leave per year, and the employer is not allowed to offer payment in lieu of this entitlement, except on termination of employment. The Directive makes provision for annual leave to be a pro rata entitlement for those employees who work less than full-time hours.
Term-time only employees, whether issued with a one year contract or contracts on a term-by-term basis, should therefore be given the appropriate amount of pro rata holiday entitlement. Normally, subject to departmental operational needs, this leave should be taken at the end of the term worked.
Employees working on a term-time basis should not receive enhanced hourly rates to compensate for having no annual leave, but instead should receive the same hourly rate as colleagues working on a full-time basis and be entitled to annual leave normally to be taken at the end of each term
In many cases employees working on a term-time only basis are not allowed to take the annual leave that they are entitled to during term time, but the hourly rate of pay that they receive takes account of this entitlement. In order to comply with the Working Time Regulations, therefore, those employees working on a term time only basis must be allocated a nominal week at the end of each term that they work to enable them to take their due paid holiday entitlement over that week. This additional week does not involve 'extra' pay as total salary due is related to the hours actually present at work over the term and in that calculation the hourly rate includes allowance for pro rata holiday entitlement earned each hour, and the same total accumulated salary is simply paid out over the period of term plus one week rather than term only. The extra week represents paid holiday, as total salary will be spread out over that week which is therefore a paid week.
The contract template has a standard clause relating to holiday to be used for term-time only employees, which meets the requirements under the Working Time Regulations.
Worked examples of how to calculate annual leave for term time only workers are given below:
Term-time only worker paid on a term-by-term basis
A member of University support staff works 20 hours per week for 8 weeks in each term and is to be paid over the months in which they actually work.
In one year, a full-time member of staff in grades 1-5 actually attends work for: 260 (working days) — 8 (bank holidays) — 30 (paid leave) = 222 days.
This is equivalent to 222 x 36.5 (weekly hours) ÷ 5 = 1620.6 hours per year actually worked.
The number of hours per year that the above term-time only member of support staff would actually work would be;
- 8 weeks x 3 terms x 5 days x 20/5 hours per day = 480 hours per year actually worked.
- The pro rata salary, in annual terms, would therefore be
- 480 ÷ 1620.6 = 29.6% x annual salary
The pro-rata salary would be split equally between three terms and would be paid over 9 weeks to cover for a nominal week at the end of each term to allow the member of staff to take annual leave owed to them which they had already been paid to take during term but had not been able to take during term-time.
Term-time only worker paid on an annual basis
A member of University support staff works 15 hours per week for 9 weeks in each term and is to be paid on an annual basis.
In one year, a full-time member of staff in grades 1-5 actually attends work for: 260 (working days) — 8 (bank holidays) — 30 (paid leave) = 222 days. This is equivalent to 222 x 36.5 (weekly hours) ÷ 5 = 1620.6 hours.
The number of hours per year that the above term-time only clerical member of staff would actually work would be;
- 9 weeks x 3 terms x 5 days x 15/5 hours per day = 405 hours per year actually worked.
- The pro rata salary, in annual terms, would therefore be
- 405 ÷ 1620.6 = 25% x annual salary
The pro-rata salary would be paid on a monthly basis spread equally through the year and would take account of an additional nominal week at the end of each term of working 9 weeks for annual leave owed but not taken during term-time.