Annual Leave not accruing for the first month of employment?

StyxianCetacean

Hi all,


Frequent lurker, infrequent poster yada yada yada


I've recently started a new job within the NHS and just the other day got set up on the annual leave booking system. I found my allowance to be my contracted amount pro-rata'd for the period from my start date until the end of the leave year, but then adjusted by about a day and a half deducted.



I queried this and was told that on starting, annual leave does not accrue until the beginning of the next month - i.e. the only way to not lose out on leave would be to start on the 1st! I've never heard of this as a policy before and it's not mentioned in my contract (though that is also mostly wrong) or in the Agenda for Change handbook (I think, it's 333 pages). Gov.uk and ACAS both seem to agree that annual leave accrues from day 1 so I'm wondering if this is going to be something worth challenging.



My annual leave allowance is above statutory so even after this loss I'm not going to have less than the legal minimum - does this affect things (i.e. as long as my employer provides the minimum they can accrue or deduct the rest however they like)?


The job is pretty good in terms of pay/benefits/opportunities so I don't want to cause a massive stink over nothing but this obviously could affect a lot of other employees. On the other hand, I surely can't be the first person to query such a backwards sounding rule?


I'm a bit all over the place with this to be honest, not sure whether to get worked up or just suck it up. Any ideas?

marliepanda

Suck it up, anything over statutory can have its own rules as long as those rules aren’t discriminatory

Me2you

I got extra holiday because I started on the 31st. Stupid rule I agree.....

chrisbur

Not something I have any experience of but out of curiosity had a look around. It seems that different NHS groups have different ways of working out the leave for new starters. If you google "Entitlement on joining the Trust" you will see several PDFs which all that I looked at have a different system. None exactly matched the one you describe nearest one only counted whole months but if you started up to 7th of the month they called that a whole month. You can perhaps find the one that you need for your area.

As I understand it (again very limited experience) anything above the legal minimum is down to your employer's rules.

Savvy_Sue

StyxianCetacean wrote: »

The job is pretty good in terms of pay/benefits/opportunities so I don't want to cause a massive stink over nothing but this obviously could affect a lot of other employees. On the other hand, I surely can't be the first person to query such a backwards sounding rule?

I'm a bit all over the place with this to be honest, not sure whether to get worked up or just suck it up. Any ideas?

Ask through your union would be my advice, and if not in one then this is another reason to join.

But you're right, leave DOES accrue from day one, but other posters are right too and anything above statutory can have its own rules.

StyxianCetacean

marliepanda wrote: »

Suck it up, anything over statutory can have its own rules as long as those rules aren’t discriminatory

chrisbur wrote: »

As I understand it (again very limited experience) anything above the legal minimum is down to your employer's rules.

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

But you're right, leave DOES accrue from day one, but other posters are right too and anything above statutory can have its own rules.

Thanks guys, clears up where I stand. Not illegal, just dumb.

Genuineguy03

If it was statutory leave, that accures from day one. Anything in addition to statory leave entitledment is at the descretion of the employer (subject to your contract and company annual leave policies). Have you checked the company policy/handbook and contact? As one or the other will likely confirm what they already told you as to how they calculate company leave entitlement.