1.  About this guidance

1.1.       St George’s, University of London is committed to all employees achieving a productive balance between work and life outside work. Annual leave is paid time off work to be used for any purpose. It is sometimes referred to as holiday.

1.2.       The purpose of this guidance is to outline the approach to calculating and booking annual leave.

1.3.       This guidance applies to all employees.

2.  Annual leave year

2.1.       St George’s, University of London’s annual leave accounting period runs from 1 August to 31 July each year.

2.2.       All employees are entitled to 32 days’ annual leave for full-time staff, pro-rata for part‑time.

2.3.       All holidays, including Public Holidays and Closure days are subject to the requirements of the work of St George’s, University of London and may be varied at the discretion of St George’s, University of London.

2.4.       Annual leave entitlements are shown on the HR system, MyWorkplace, and expressed in hours. Therefore 32 days annual leave will be shown as 224 hours for employees who would usually work a full-time week equivalent to 35 hours. For employees contracted to work a full-time equivalent week of 40 hours, each day represents 8 hours and therefore 32 days annual leave represents 256 hours.

2.5.       The right to paid annual leave begins on the first day of employment but during the first year of employment employees are only entitled to take paid leave which has been accrued since they joined. MyWorkplace will calculate the accrued leave due during the first year of service.

2.6.       All employees are encouraged to take their full annual leave entitlement. The Working Time Regulations 1998 place a duty of care upon employers to ensure that employees are able to take a minimum of 5.6 weeks' annual leave per annum, including Bank Holidays. This represents 28 days for a worker working 5 days per week and is pro-rated for part-time staff.

3.  Part-time employees

3.1.       Part-time employees have a pro-rata annual leave entitlement.

3.2.       Annual leave for part-time employees is calculated based on the number of hours they are contracted to work as a proportion of the full-time equivalent. For example, an employee working a total of 21 hours per week on a contract where the full-time equivalent is 35 hours will be entitled to:

21 / 35 hours per week x 32 days annual leave * 7 hours per day = 134.4 hours annual leave per year.

3.3.       For part-time employees who work variable daily hours, the entitlement is calculated in the same way. On days of annual leave, the appropriate number of normal working hours for those days are deducted from the total entitlement. For example, somebody working 16 hours per week, 8 hours on a Monday, 5 on a Thursday and 3 on a Friday would have 8 hours deducted if they took annual leave on a Monday and 3 hours if they took annual leave on a Friday.

4.  Public Holidays and Closure Days

4.1 Staff who work full time are entitled to eight days public holiday, and three days holiday over the Christmas period, usually between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

4.2 For staff who work part time the entitlement to public holidays will be pro-rata to your contracted hours, irrespective of which days of the week you work. Staff who work part time will be entitled to up to three days holiday over the Christmas period, should these fall on their normal working day.

5.  Booking annual leave

5.1.       All employees are required to book and keep track of their annual leave using the MyWorkplace system available on their computer.

5.2.       Employees must obtain prior approval from the relevant manager before taking annual leave. Institutes/Departments may notify employees in advance of periods when leave may or may not be taken in accordance with local operational requirements. In some instances, this may be specified in the letter of appointment. 

5.3.       Every effort will be made to accommodate personal circumstances and for agreement to be given to annual leave requests, although approval will be withheld where it affects operational requirements.

5.4.       Requests for annual leave should be submitted with reasonable notice. Employees should obtain prior approval from their manager before making holiday travel arrangements.

6.  Carrying over annual leave

6.1.       All employees are expected to take annual leave on a regular basis and are expected to take their full entitlement within the leave year.

6.2.       However, up to one week’s annual leave may be carried over. This will reflect an individual’s contractual working hours, for example somebody contracted to work 35 hours per week could carry over 35 hours, whereas somebody contracted to work 21 hours per week could carry over a maximum of 21 hours.

6.3.       Any leave which is carried over must be taken within three months of the following annual leave year (ie by end October) or they will be lost.

7.  Sickness absence during annual leave

7.1.       Should an employee fall ill during a period of annual leave, they should contact their manager in the usual way when sick. Subject to the production of a medical certificate, the annual leave entitlement will be credited for the particular days covered by the certificate. Employees will not be similarly reimbursed for sickness which occurs on a Bank Holiday, extra statutory day or closure days.

7.2.       Employees on long term sick leave may request paid holiday leave in line with normal Institute/Department procedures.

7.3.       Where an employee on long term sick leave is unable to use their leave entitlement due to continued sickness, they will be permitted to carry forward unused statutory holiday (20 days per annum, pro-rata for part time staff) into the next leave year, and must use this within 18 months of the start of the leave year into which it has been carried forward, subject to normal line management approval.

8.  End of employment

8.1.       Employees will normally be required to take outstanding annual leave during their notice period preceding their final day of employment. 

8.2.       Employees who resign from permanent posts where operational requirements, as specified by their manager, prevent any outstanding leave being taken in their notice period are entitled to receive pay in lieu of any annual holiday entitlement which has been accrued but not taken.

8.3.       Employees who resign from fixed-term contracts prior to their stated expiry date are required to take their accrued annual leave within their notice period preceding their final day of employment.

8.4.       If an employee has exceeded their annual leave entitlement on leaving, St George’s, University of London will arrange to deduct an equivalent number of hours’ pay from any pay due at the end of employment or will otherwise seek to recover the money owed after employment has ended.