The Queen’s Funeral Bank Holiday Arrangements

Bank holiday confirmed for date of The Queen’s funeral

The Queen’s funeral has been announced. As you are no doubt aware, the government has confirmed that Monday 19 September 2022 will be a national bank holiday in all parts of the UK for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s State Funeral. This will also mark the last day of the period of national mourning following The Queen’s death on 8 September 2022. 

Government guidance provides that the Queen’s funeral bank holiday can be treated the same as other bank holidays, which means that some employers may choose to treat this the same as other additional bank holidays. There is no statutory right to time off so you will need to review your contracts of employment to determine whether your staff are entitled to time off on this additional bank holiday, for example:

• If your contracts  say employees have a right to 20 days’ annual leave plus time off on 8 public/bank holidays, where the bank holidays are listed and there is no extra flexibility in the wording, employees will not have an automatic right to time of on the day of the Queen’s funeral.
• If your contracts  give a right to 20 days’ annual leave plus 8 public/bank holidays but do not list the bank holidays this will you some flexibility to move leave around i.e. you could give staff the 19th as a day off but require them to work on another public/bank holiday.
• If your contracts  say X days + all public/bank holidays employees will be entitled to the extra day off for the Queen’s funeral.
• If your contracts  say X days (e.g. 28 days) annual leave including all public/bank holidays they have a  right to the extra day’s leave but it will be deducted from their 28 days’ annual leave so effectively they will have fewer days on which to ‘choose’ to take leave.

Where it is your intention to suspend your operations on 19th in recognition of the Queen’s funeral and require leave to be taken from existing leave entitlement, but you have employees who donot have sufficient leave remaining to take 19th as paid leave, I would suggest consulting with those employees and seeing if you can come to some other arrangement with them.

If you require employees to work on the day of the Queen’s funeral, there are no statutory rules regarding extra pay on bank holidays. This will depend on the wording of your contracts of employment and any custom and practice that has been set on previous bank holidays.

If you need any advice and support in managing these arrangement, please contact us in the normal way. At People HR, we provide HR Services for small businesses, our friendly team can me sure to help you out.