All about holiday policies (TSB)

Although there is an overall annual leave policy that defines how much holiday leave you are entitled to, decisions are taken at a local level to decide what specific holiday policy is in place for your part of the business. This is because it's difficult at a group level to define a single policy that works for teams of all sizes.

Decisions are therefore made at a local level to determine the numbers needed to continue running your team effectively while ensuring everyone can take their entitlements.

Any local guidelines should be reasonable and communicated to everyone and in a reasonable time frame. You may be asked to consider taking a certain proportion of your leave by a certain time in the year in order to help with effective planning and resourcing of your team. Likewise, you may be asked to submit preferences for any week, or two week breaks so that managers can try to accommodate as many people's wishes as possible - this is especially important for working families during school holiday periods.

All requests should be considered properly, and fairly.

You may also be asked to take a two-week block of holiday each year.

It is general practice that you may be allowed to carry over up to 35 hours of your annual leave into the next holiday year (pro-rated for part-time colleagues), but this is at the discretion of your manager, and you should discuss this and the reasons why. To allow for effective planning, your request could be declined, and you may be asked to take the leave during this holiday year if there is availability to do so.

If you feel you are being treated unfairly, or your requests are being unreasonably denied, you can talk to one of our local reps, or your Accord officer for support.