England and Wales have 8 permanent Bank Holidays. These include:
In Scotland, Easter Monday is not a Bank Holiday. However, an additional New Year's Bank Holiday and Saint Andrew's Day are added to the calendar, bringing the total number of Bank Holidays in Scotland to 9 days.
Like Scotland, the list of Bank Holidays in Northern Ireland differs from the rest of the UK. In addition to the 8 Bank Holidays given in England, NI has 2 extra Bank Holidays to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne, bringing the total to 10 days.
The next bank holiday is Monday 25th December 2023 (Christmas Day).
Northern Ireland tops the list for the most Bank Holidays in the UK, at a total of 10 days.
Whether or not employees recieve paid time off for Bank Holidays will depend on their employment contract. Most employers choose to include the Bank Holiday dates in their statutory 5.6 weeks of annual leave that are given by law to all employees.
If you're organising your team's calendar for the coming leave year, you'll need to be make sure you've made note of the Bank Holidays across all regions of the UK.
As to whether Bank Holidays are included in an employee's leave entitlement, this will depend on your own company policy.
Whether your business includes Bank Holidays in addition to employees' statutory leave or not, you'll need to make a note of these important dates in your leave management system alongside your team's other leave requests. TimeKeeper's Public Holiday calendar function makes this simple, allowing you to add a list of non-deductible dates to an employee's leave record automatically. The correct Bank Holiday dates will be loaded for the year for each region automatically, and can be edited if needed with additional dates (such as company closure) added too. You can also set whether these dates are unpaid or paid, so that the correct paid leave hours are added to each employee's timesheet.
Ready to organise your team's holiday calendar and simplify your leave tracking in 2024? Try a 14 day free trial of TimeKeeper.