Queen’s funeral bank holiday: What Yorkshire businesses should do about staff time off - Charlotte Geesin

As it was with the additional bank holiday this year for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the starting position is that there is no automatic right for employees to take to time off - paid or otherwise - on bank holidays.

Whether or not individual staff members are automatically entitled to paid time off on the day of the Queen’s funeral will ultimately depend upon the wording of their contract of employment.

If their contract gives them an unspecified, blanket right to paid time off for bank holidays, then they will have a contractual right to paid time off on the day of the funeral.

But if their contract specifies the bank holidays that their employer will recognize - or refers to those ‘normal’ bank holidays - then this additional bank holiday will fall outside the scope of their contract. In this instance, time off - whether it’s paid or unpaid - would be purely down to an agreement between individual employers and their employees.”

However, the government has said it expects employers to respond sensitively to requests for time off for the Queen’s funeral.

Businesses that do want to offer their employees an extra day of paid leave should ensure that part time staff - and those who do not usually work on Mondays - are treated fairly and in line with the law. Otherwise, they could potentially open themselves up to liability for employment claims if they fail to treat workers who do not normally work Mondays in the same way as those who do, when it comes to the benefit of an extra day of paid leave.

Employers can also ask staff use a day from their existing holiday allowance to cover any business shutdown on the day of the funeral, but this approach would need to be very sensitively handled when it comes to the communication of the reasoning behind it, given that many employees would expect to be given an additional day’s leave if their employer chooses to close for the funeral.

Businesses that need to stay open on the day of the funeral but want to allow the benefit of the bank holiday should, ideally, speak with staff to see if anyone is happy to work on this day in the first instance. Staff who are happy to work would then receive the benefit of the bank holiday in lieu, and so won’t lose out on the paid time off, while allowing staff who do want to watch or participate in the proceedings to do so.

When it comes to short-notice time off to view The Queen lying in state, businesses should act compassionately and sensitively in response to these requests.

Legally, an employee needs to give twice as much notice as the total amount of time they are wanting to take off (so two days’ notice for one days’ holiday, for example), but even where this cannot be accommodated, due to the nature of the national event we are experiencing, employers should try to be as accommodating as possible when it comes to leave requests for this specific purpose. It might also be worth considering allowing some temporary flexible working arrangements for employees who wish for time to grieve, lay flowers, or queue to view The Queen lying in state.

Again, there is no ‘automatic’ to time off for these events, and businesses can still ask for annual leave requests to be submitted in the usual way. They could also agree unpaid time off, or a temporary variation to working hours to allow employees to pay their respects.

Charlotte Geesin is legal director at Cleckheaton-based HR and employment law consultancy Howarths.