EZHR WEEKLY UPDATE 11th NOVEMBER 2022

EZHR WEEKLY UPDATE 11th NOVEMBER 2022

This week the Prime Minister has announced that Monday 8 May 2023 will be a national bank holiday in all parts of the UK, following the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III on the 6th May 2023.

Given this is a Bank Holiday rather than a Public Holiday, this is likely to be treated the same as other bank holidays.

This means employers will need to review their contracts of employment to determine whether their staff are entitled to time off on this additional bank holiday.

Contracts which are explicit about 8 bank holidays, or the specific bank holidays, will not have an automatic right to time off

Those with ‘plus bank holidays’ are likely to be required to offer people the time off, but there is no statutory right to the time off.

That said it is being treated as a bank holiday by schools and healthcare settings so it is highly likely to be treated as a bank holiday nationwide.

You will also need to factor this into plans for annual leave as May now has three bank holidays.

Additionally, we have seen a number of short-service dismissals taking place. While this is generally a straightforward solution, there are still some points you need to think about:

• consider whether your action can be seen as, or is, discriminative

• if you’re letting 20 people go either through short-service dismissals or a mixture of short-service dismissals and redundancy, you have a duty to consult

• while you don’t have to give a reason, you need to have clarity on the reason why to avoid confusion

• there are still unfair reasons to dismiss, and if you force through a short service dismissal because of another issue, you can still end up in trouble

Don’t forget the World Cup starts on the 20th November and get your plans in place.

If you need any help on these or other HR matters feel free to give us a shout.