Guidance notes for part-time workers

To ensure fair and equitable treatment of all staff and in accordance with statutory requirements, your conditions of service provide that leave entitlement for part time staff, including Bank Holiday and Closure Days, is proportionate to the number of hours you are contracted to work - ie your Full Time Equivalent hours (FTE).

Your FTE is expressed as the number of hours you are contracted to work as a proportion of the normal full time working hours (36.5 hours per week).

Examples:

Calculating your leave

Annual leave entitlement is detailed in your terms and conditions of employment and whilst this is straightforward for full time staff, it can be more complicated for part time staff, particularly where the work pattern includes different numbers of hours worked on different days.

For part time staff whose work pattern either involves working the same number of hours each day or which only involves working full/half days, it is easier to continue to calculate and record annual leave in days/half days. Annual entitlement is based on a 5 day working week therefore holiday entitlement is calculated on a pro rata basis according to how many days you are contracted to work. Leave can only be granted in full or half days.

However, where part-time staff spread their work over several days with a different number of hours being worked on different days it can be difficult to establish what should be deducted for a day's leave as the length of each working day can vary significantly. In these situations it is fairer to calculate and express leave for part time staff in hours. For each day/half day taken as leave, the number of hours deducted from the total entitlement should be the equivalent of how many hours the employee was contracted to work on that day. The number of hours taken must still equate to the equivalent of a full/half day and leave cannot be taken in odd hours.

To help you calculate your annual leave there is an annual leave calculator available on the Human Resources website. This will give you an annual leave entitlement which includes your "normal" leave and your pro-rata entitlement to Bank Holiday and Closure Days.

Where a Bank Holiday and Closure Day falls on a day you are contracted to work and you do not work that day (because it is a Bank Holiday or Closure Day), that day should be deducted from your total leave entitlement. Where holiday is being calculated in hours, the number of hours you were contracted to work that day would be deducted. If a Bank Holiday and Closure Day falls on a day you were not contracted to work no deduction is made.

To establish the amount of discretionary leave you have available to take in the holiday year, after allowing for deductions in respect of bank holiday/closure days, you will need to :

Calculate your total annual leave entitlement in days/hours as appropriate for the holiday year, including bank holiday and closure days;
Deduct from this the days/hours you would have worked on the Bank Holiday and Closure Days which fall on your working days.
The remaining days/hours of leave are then free for you to arrange as normal annual leave subject to the usual requirement to seek the approval of your manager.

Term-time staff

These arrangements only apply to part-time staff who work all year; for staff working term time only, their annual salary includes their pro rata paid leave entitlement, to be taken on unspecified days during the vacation periods. Leave may not be taken during term time.