can employers specify when parts of holiday entitlement can be taken?

specialboy

You need to enure she gets a minimum of 123.2 hours paid leave per year, that is the min she is entitled to.

specialboy

Also when you go away and require her to take holidays you must give her the or react notice which is twice as much as you require her to take, ie or two weeks leave you must give her four weeks notice.

General_Grant

getmore4less wrote: »

Why does she not have work to do when you are away.

If gone over this year you could have a claim for overpayment of wages.

The employee is a Personal Assistant, not an office-based secretary.

TELLIT01

If the dates for the leave are made known on an annual basis I don't think it unreasonable for her to take leave to tie in with your dates. As you say, there is no work for her in those weeks.
Some firms have annual shutdowns and staff have to reserve leave to cover that time.
I am surprised about the contract though. I though everybody had a right to a written contract of employment. If so it seems you may have been breaking the law for the past 3 years.
Edited to add:- Just found this on the CA website "All employees, regardless of the number of hours they work per week, are entitled to receive a written statement from their employer within two months of starting work. The statement should describe the main terms of the contract of employment." So an actual written contract isn't required but the above is. If that hasn't been done you are in a very weak position if she doesn't want to agree to fixed leave dates.

Running_On_Empty

Nannytone, I would contact ACAS for advice on the contract issue.
Make it clear to her that in future, she needs to take her holidays when you take yours and that she will not be paid for the holiday she has just booked.

lonestarfan

Running_On_Empty wrote: »

Nannytone, I would contact ACAS for advice on the contract issue.
Make it clear to her that in future, she needs to take her holidays when you take yours and that she will not be paid for the holiday she has just booked.

That is not reasonable to say she won't be paid for the holiday when she's never been given any reasonable notice that the OP wants to change what's been going on. My advice would be honour this holiday she's booked. Very quickly meet with her and tell her how things are going to be from now on with some reasonable notice. The OP by her own admission has never made it clear. That's not surprising as the OP won't know evrything about employment given the nature of how she has become an employer. the OP has said she's just realised she's been paying for 10 weeks holidays etc. the Op needs to formalise everything and do it in a way that is pleasant as its a friends daughter and I think she wants to keep her. The PA can then make an informed decision about if she still wants to work for OP on the new procedures.

theoretica

This is likely to bring up also the question of unpaid leave, or working more some weeks in return for time off later. If you tell her when she must take 4 weeks of her holiday that may not leave enough for any trips she wants to go on at other times. It might be good to think about how you want this to work out before your discussion with her.

Running_On_Empty

lonestarfan wrote: »

That is not reasonable to say she won't be paid for the holiday when she's never been given any reasonable notice that the OP wants to change what's been going on. My advice would be honour this holiday she's booked. Very quickly meet with her and tell her how things are going to be from now on with some reasonable notice. The OP by her own admission has never made it clear. That's not surprising as the OP won't know evrything about employment given the nature of how she has become an employer. the OP has said she's just realised she's been paying for 10 weeks holidays etc. the Op needs to formalise everything and do it in a way that is pleasant as its a friends daughter and I think she wants to keep her. The PA can then make an informed decision about if she still wants to work for OP on the new procedures.

But it is unreasonable of the employee to present her blind employer with a fait accompli!

lonestarfan

Running_On_Empty wrote: »

But it is unreasonable of the employee to present her blind employer with a fait accompli!

That is true. However, the employer has not corrected that behaviour when it has been displayed in the past. Also the employer has not laid out clearly the rules and procedures to follow for requesting and taking leave so the employee does not know what is acceptable behaviour. The employer (the OP) needs to correct that and put in place procedures and give some reasonable notice about when these will take effect. The PA can then make an informed decision about accepting the post or not.

getmore4less

Is this 22hrs over 5 days or more?

New holiday year, just put the planned away periods as set holidays for this year and allow flexibility for the others

if you go away 4 week that's 20days allocated.
Then there are the other planned days for the year xmas and easter then add those to the fixed days and work out how many are left.

If she is not happy with this you could go to these weeks not being paid so you employ her for 48 weeks a year and prorate the holidays( based on 48 weeks work.