TCM0126140 - Eligibility - remunerative work (general): Recognised, customer, or other, holidays (Info)

Recognised, customary, or other, holidays should be disregarded when considering the hours worked.

Recognised, customary, or other, holidays are days which employers and employees have agreed are non-working days. However, not every day that employers and employees agree are non-working days are days of recognised, customary, or other, holiday.

Example

Stephen Jones is a non-teaching assistant in a school where lessons take place Monday to Friday and Saturday morning. Stephen’s contract of employment requires him to work Monday to Friday and on Saturday. In May, following discussions between the Headmaster, Governors and employees, it was decided with the agreement of all parties that from the start of the next academic year lessons would no longer take place on Saturday.

Stephen’s contract of employment now requires him to work Monday to Friday. Although all parties agree that Saturday is a non-working day, it wasn’t agreed that it was a holiday. It’s therefore not a day of recognised, customary, or other, holiday.

A period can be recognised, customary, or other, holiday even when an employee

  • doesn’t receive holiday pay

or

  • is free to seek work elsewhere during the holiday.

People who work in a particular place are covered by the holiday arrangements there. However, a day that’s a holiday for most workers in a place isn’t always a holiday for the customer. This can only be decided by examining all the evidence to check whether there is anything that makes the customer’s holiday agreement different from that of their colleagues. This happens, most commonly, in educational establishments.

Any period for which a person receives holiday or wages in lieu of holiday pay is a period of recognised customary or other holiday, as is a period that the customer considers to be a holiday.

To decide whether a period is a recognised, customary or other holiday the customer should

  • check the terms of their contract of employment, which may set out the actual period and dates of the customer’s holidays. Often, the contract will only state that the customer is entitled to a certain number of days’ holiday pay
  • consider any employer’s evidence, supplied by the customer about attribution of holiday entitlement to certain days. If it’s attributable, these days are days of recognised, customary, or other, holidays

If the holiday pay or entitlement isn’t linked to specific days then the customer should tell you that they

  • have arranged to take a holiday at a particular time

or

  • consider any particular period to be a holiday.

Such days (up to the maximum holiday entitlement in the customer’s contract) should be treated as days of customary recognised holiday and disregarded.