Our Annual and Special Leave policies

Taking annual leave at regular periods throughout the year is important to make sure you have an effective work-life balance. We encourage everyone to work with their line managers to make sure that all leave is planned for and taken during the leave year. The importance and benefits of taking appropriate breaks from work are well documented and are key to us all achieving and enjoying a positive work-life balance.

Managing annual leave throughout the year means we can all request leave in a way that is fair, and managers can take into account the needs of the service as well as yours, to make sure the service has enough staff to run safely and effectively for our patients.

• Read our Annual Leave Policy
• Read our Special Leave policy
• Read our Buying and Selling Leave Policy

Your paid annual leave entitlement varies depending on your length of service. For all employees, the annual leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March. Annual leave is determined in hours (not days) for all employees, full or part time. Basic annual leave provisions are:

Annual leave entitlements

Length of service	Contractual annual leave + General Public Holidays	Contractual annual leave + General Public Holidays (in hours)
On appointment	27 days + Bank holidays	202.5 + Bank holidays
After 5 years service	29 days + Bank holidays	217.5 + Bank holidays
After 10 years of service	33 days + Bank holidays	247.5 + Bank holidays

 

Use our annual leave calculator to work out your annual leave and bank holiday entitlements.

Requests should be made to your line manager by completing the Annual Leave application form. Your line manager should respond promptly to requests and advice on reasons why any requests are not supported.

Employees are strongly advised to get authorisation before making any booking or making financial commitments as we're not liable for any loss as a result of making travel arrangements before seeking approval for the leave.

Normally no more than two weeks leave will be granted at any one time, however, requests for extended periods of leave may be granted at the discretion of your line manager.

It's the responsibility of the employee to keep their Annual Leave Form and to provide it when requesting leave.

We’re committed to supporting you to achieve a healthy balance between your work and personal lives and recognise some colleagues may wish to take more or less than their contractual leave entitlement.

Some people regularly have holiday remaining at the end of the year, so this scheme will allow you to sell back up to five days. You will also be able to buy additional holiday (up to five days). This supports anyone who may want additional leave for a special occasion, childcare reasons or just to improve their work-life balance.

Here's a summary of the scheme:

• The policy provides an opportunity for you to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave (pro rata for part time) in any April – March period, with your Line Managers approval. 
• There’ll be two application ‘windows’ each year – June and November
• There’ll be a centralised process for making an application, via this link which will open at the start of each request window. 
• All requests to buy or sell annual leave will be shared with your Line Manager who will consider the request in the context of the service and decided whether they can approve your request. Where a request is rejected by your Line Manager you will be informed of this decision by email. 
• Any request to buy or sell annual leave will apply for the current leave year only and will not affect contractual leave entitlement. A new request is needed for each leave year
• If annual leave is sold, the payment can be received in one lump sum or spread across the remainder of the leave year but is not pensionable.
• Any annual leave bought cannot be carried forward into the following leave year.

In line with Agenda for Change terms and conditions, you won’t be entitled to an additional day off if you are sick on a statutory/bank holiday.

If a person is off sick, they're entitled to receive additional time off in lieu of their statutory minimum holiday entitlement (28 days including bank holidays). However, our annual leave entitlements are more generous than the statutory minimum, therefore there is no right to additional time off in respect of sickness on a bank holiday, although you will be entitled to additional time off if you are sick during any period of annual leave provided you produce a medical certificate to cover the period of sickness.

Parental leave gives the right to take unpaid time off work to look after a child or make arrangements for the child's welfare. Parents can use the leave to spend more time with their children and strike a better balance between their work and family commitments.

The entitlement allows for up to 18 weeks of unpaid parental leave, in a minimum of one week blocks, subject to a maximum of four weeks in any one year.

Parental leave can only be taken in blocks of a week, unless the employee has a disabled child. A full time employee who takes two days in any one week will have “used up” one week's leave. Employees with disabled children can take leave in blocks of one day. 

Employees must give 21 days notice of their plans to take parental leave and let us know when they intend the leave to start and end. 

We may postpone an employee's period of parental leave for up to six months if the employee's absence from work would cause substantial disruption or harm to the provision of the service.

Employees have no automatic right to take more than four weeks of leave for any individual child during a year.

Flexible working can include a variety of different working practices which enable people to vary their working pattern, i.e. the days and hours that they work. Anyone can make a request for flexible working regardless of reason, length of service or the number of previous requests they have made.

Our ORG021 Flexible Working[pdf] 359KB provides more information about the types of flexible working arrangements that may be available and how to make an application.