How Public Holidays Work in United Kingdom

The United Kingdom does not have public holidays in the continental sense. Instead it observes bank holidays, a concept created by the Bank Holidays Act 1871 and now governed by the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971. These are days on which banks and most businesses close, but the label is important for employers because a bank holiday carries no automatic legal meaning for the individual worker.

The most common misunderstanding is that employees have a statutory right to paid time off on a bank holiday. They do not. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give workers 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave, which for a five-day week equals 28 days, and an employer is entirely free to count the bank holidays within that 28-day allowance. Whether a worker actually gets the day off, and whether they are paid extra for working it, depends on the wording of the employment contract rather than on the calendar.

The number of bank holidays also varies across the UK's three legal jurisdictions. England and Wales observe 8, while Scotland has its own list that includes 2 January and St Andrew's Day (30 November) but drops Easter Monday, and Northern Ireland observes 10 by adding St Patrick's Day (17 March) and the Battle of the Boyne, also called Orangemen's Day (12 July). Employers with staff in more than one nation cannot rely on a single national calendar.

When a bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, a substitute weekday, normally the following Monday, is designated in its place so that the day off is not lost. For payroll and leave administration this means the calendar shifts from year to year, contractual entitlement must be read carefully to see whether bank holidays are included in or added on top of the annual allowance, and any premium for working the day is a matter of contract, not statute.