NHS Scotland staff and managers can now use an online calculator to check on annual leave and public holiday entitlement. This can be found here.
Annual leave and public holiday entitlement is expressed in terms of days in the Agenda for Change Handbook. This will not change. However, the length of the working week for Agenda for Change staff in Scotland is reducing. From 1 April 2024, the standard working week reduced from 37.5 to 37 hours. This will mean that annual leave and public holiday entitlement, as expressed in hours, will be calculated in line with the new working hours.
For full-time staff this is relatively straightforward. But part-time staff will receive a pro-rata reduction in their working time, meaning working time will not necessarily be defined in the round numbers which were previously the case.
A spreadsheet setting out annual leave and public holiday entitlement in hours, in the context of the reduction of the working week, can be found here.
The spreadsheet is divided into tabs setting out tables for different circumstances, and covers both annual leave and public holidays. With regard to annual leave, entitlement as set out in the Agenda for Change Handbook is 27 days on appointment, 29 days after 5 years’ service, and 33 days after 10 years. Yearly entitlement in hours is calculated by taking working time, dividing by 5 and multiplying by the relevant number of days (27, 29 or 33). The result of this calculation is then rounded to the nearest half hour.
The public holiday section contains tab setting out entitlement at each stage of the reduction of the working week. In 2024-25, the standard working week has been reduced to 37 hours, meaning the standard length of a public holiday day is 7.4 hours (7 hours 24 minutes). Again, entitlement is worked out according to working hours, divided by 5 and multiplied by 8. It is then rounded up to the nearest half day, as per paragraph 13.6 of the Agenda for Change Handbook.
To use the spreadsheet, go to the appropriate tab and find the range within which the relevant working hours sit, then read across to determine entitlement. For example, a part-time member of staff with 10 years’ service (who is therefore entitled to 33 days of annual leave a year) whose new hours in 2024-25 are 30.8, would sit in the range between 30.87 and 30.8 on the 33 days annual leave table, and is therefore entitled to 203.5 hours of annual leave.
On the public holiday tab, the same member of staff would sit in the range between 32.37 and 30.07 hours, and therefore be entitled to 51.8 hours of public holiday per year. Adding the two together would give a total entitlement of 255.3 hours.
The online calculator does all these calculations automatically and is therefore the most convenient way of determining entitlement in any given situation. The calculator can also be used to determine entitlement for staff who depart or take up post part way through the leave year, or change contracted hours within a given leave year.
In using the calculator, staff and managers should be careful to choose the correct options and enter the correct information (particularly with regard to working hours).
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