Help calculating holiday entitlement

gillian2001uk

I wonder if someone can help me. I went onto a term time contract from 1st April 07 - 30th Sept 07, then as of 1st October 07 I reverted back to full time. I have been waiting four months for my annual leave to be re-calculated to see what I am entitled to. My normal years annual leave is 29 days plus 8 public. Between April 07 - Sep 07 I was off for 50 days....... my salary dropped almost £300 per month for this period. I have been doing full time since Oct 07 and they are telling me I owe them 9.5 hours..... how can this be?

I really think they are ripping me off, so would appreciate some advice from someone who knows how it works.........

Savvy_Sue

gillian2001uk wrote: »

I wonder if someone can help me. I went onto a term time contract from 1st April 07 - 30th Sept 07, then as of 1st October 07 I reverted back to full time. I have been waiting four months for my annual leave to be re-calculated to see what I am entitled to. My normal years annual leave is 29 days plus 8 public. Between April 07 - Sep 07 I was off for 50 days....... my salary dropped almost £300 per month for this period. I have been doing full time since Oct 07 and they are telling me I owe them 9.5 hours..... how can this be?

I really think they are ripping me off, so would appreciate some advice from someone who knows how it works.........

When does your leave year run to and from?

How I would work it out (and this may not be exactly how they do it and I'm going to leave the Bank Holidays out of this equation) is to take your total annual leave: 29 days.

Divide 29 by 52: .56

Multiply .56 by the number of weeks you worked: in a full year it would be 39? 21.75

But if you had 50 days off between April and September, did you only work for 14 weeks? If so, you would multiply .56 by 14: 7.84 days.

Of course it's possible your employer calculates these things in hours. But hopefully you can see the principles behind it ...

You could ask them to 'display their workings': I'd regard that as a reasonable request, I was doing similar calculations this morning, realised I'd diddled a colleague out of 3 days somehow!

gillian2001uk

Thanks so much for responding. I have requested how they have worked it out, therefore once I get it, I will come back to you and maybe you could help me then? If thats okay with you.

:T

gillian2001uk

Got my calculation working through.... can you make sense of this:-

April - Sept 07 Based on working 33.75 hrs per week which I did for 6 months
Annual Leave = 97.5 hrs
Public Holiday - 30 hrs
Total 127.5 hrs

Oct - Mar 08 Based on 37.5 hrs per week
Annual Leave = 108.5 hrs
Public holiday = 30 hrs
Total = 138.5 hrs

Total leave available: 266 hrs
taken 48 days = 324 hrs

Excess hrs worked but not paid 97.5 hrs

they are saying i owe 9.5 hrs.... I make it I am owed 39.5 hours?????

can you make sense from this? your help would be greatly appreciated

Savvy_Sue

Sorry Gillian I have not had a minute today to do the sums in detail, and may not be able to tomorrow - anyone else?

gillian2001uk

Thanks.... anyone else can you help????????/ this has been going on for 4 months now.

Savvy_Sue

See, I am confused by how you can have worked excess hours you haven't been paid for, or why your public holidays are calculated at 30 hours in each of those separate periods. I can't remember when Easter was last year, but it's very early this year (which could make life interesting for those whose leave year runs from 1 April) so in fact there are 5 public holidays between now and the end of March, so by my reckoning you'd be due 37.5 hours PH. And when you were working fewer hours, since Easter was in April, that would be another 5 PHs: two for Easter, two for May bank holidays and 1 for August. So then you'd be due 33.5 hours for those. I really don't know what companies are going to do about that!

do the hours you work include a paid or an unpaid lunch break?

I'll get onto Excel with this tomorrow ...

gillian2001uk

To be honest, I dont know how they calculated 30 hours - I do know we only get good friday, easter monday, one may holiday and fair monday.

I was paid about £300 less than my normal salary for those six months while working term time....

I would really appreciate it if you could help me on this.... My calculation brings me to being owed around 39 hours holiday (divide by 7.5 hrs which is what I work a day).

I look forward to hearing from you .....

Savvy_Sue

And I still need to be clear about this (sorry for all the questions!) - were you working

a) normally but reduced hours for those 6 months, or

b) did you only work the weeks that fell during school terms,

c) or was it something in between?

If the answer's b or c then knowing the number of weeks / days you worked / didn't work would be helpful. And whether that was booked as annual leave or taken as unpaid leave. but if you don't get back I'll make some assumptions and at least see if I can get close to either your or their figures!

gillian2001uk

I worked 33.75 hrs from April 1st - 30th September. I was off a total of 48 days within this period. I then reverted to 37.5 hrs on 1st October, and this is the annual leave period I need to calculate.

During the April - Sept period I lost almost £300 in my salary per month, totalling £1800.

If you need to know any my salary details, please just let me know.... your help is deeply appreciated.

Savvy_Sue

Well, I am starting to see where they get their figures from, but need some more answers from you, starting with the ones above. And then, do YOU know what that 'Excess hours worked but not paid' means? Because it's exactly 13 days at 7.5 hours a day, or 26 weeks of only working 4.5 days, which looks suspiciously like 6 months to me. Is the £300 drop in salary about 1/10 of your salary? Or do you think they took too much off your salary?

In some ways they've worked the bank holidays in your favour, as they've done 4 days of 7.5 hours in both halves of the year, even though for the first part of the year you were working shorter days. Are you saying you all work one of the May bank holidays? And if so did you get an equivalent day off between October and March (when normally there would only be 3 Bank Holidays)? Leaving them aside because it is, as I've said, complicated this year for companies with a leave year starting in April!

gillian2001uk wrote: »

April - Sept 07 Based on working 33.75 hrs per week which I did for 6 months
Annual Leave = 97.5 hrs
Public Holiday - 30 hrs
Total 127.5 hrs

I make the annual leave 97.875 hours, which I would round up rather than down. But hey ... And that's 4 bank holidays of 7.5 hours, see above.

gillian2001uk wrote: »

Oct - Mar 08 Based on 37.5 hrs per week
Annual Leave = 108.5 hrs
Public holiday = 30 hrs
Total = 138.5 hrs

Again, I make it 108.75 which I'd round up rather than down. Bank holidays as above.

gillian2001uk wrote: »

Total leave available: 266 hrs
taken 48 days = 324 hrs

That is 48 days at 6.75 hours, and you say you took 50 days, so do you agree with them or not?

gillian2001uk wrote: »

Excess hrs worked but not paid 97.5 hrs

So, did you work hours you were not paid for? see above ...

gillian2001uk wrote: »

they are saying i owe 9.5 hrs.... I make it I am owed 39.5 hours?????

I can see where you get your 39.5 hours from:

324 hours: Leave taken:
266 hours: Leave available:
58 hours: difference.

97.5 hours: worked but not paid
58 hours: difference between leave taken and leave entitlement
39.5 hours: difference

BUT that seems a bit unlikely to me: you are saying that you have already taken 48 days leave, you have a leave entitlement of 29 days, and they still owe you a week? That only works IF they got your salary reduction wrong for 6 months.

Did they show you where they got their 9.5 from? Because I can't find that anywhere. It's not even exactly 1.5 days of either set of hours, which might make some kind of sense.

I would ask to make an appointment with someone in HR to go over all of this, if it's been worked out by someone junior that should ensure someone more senior goes over it.