Holidays including Bank Holidays

Q1. Dear Jenny, I read your last article about bank holidays and wanted to ask you about the upcoming summer holidays. I have two children, both at school and I have four weeks of the summer holidays that I have no childcare for. This is due to unexpected circumstances and I have not saved enough holiday leave to take the time off! I haven’t told my boss yet as I am not sure what to say or what my rights are?

 

Q2. The law regarding this is likely to be classed as ’emergency unpaid leave’. You are entitled to have time off work, in an emergency to care for a dependent, but the law says that this is only to deal with the emergency and to cover the time until you can arrange alternative care. This is usually for a few hours or days. You are not entitled to be paid for this time off and it would either be taken as a holiday (if you have enough) or as unpaid leave.

 

There is no set specific time scale for the right to time off and it really depends on each individual situation. However, four weeks seems a long time to be covered by the ’emergency leave’ and your employer may ask you for further information about why you can not arrange alternative care. If you can show that you can not arrange alternative care and the situation is a genuine emergency one then I think they would find it difficult to be able to discipline you in any way because this would be unreasonable and they should agree to the time off either paid or unpaid.  A practical solution to this might be to offer to make up the time at other times or to work from home. This will obviously depend on your job and I can not advise you on this unless I have more information from you.

 

Your first step then is to calculate how much annual leave you have left and see if you can arrange alternative care to cover the short fall. Once you have this information you should then approach your employer, whether in person or in a letter in the first instance is up to you. This may resolve the situation. However, if they are reluctant to give you the time off then put it in writing and try to deal with the matter more formally. If you have any problems I suggest that you contact me directly on 01229 585555