Holidays

Holiday request forms are available for completion on the intranet (see below). Once you have submitted your form, it gets sent to your manager, who will let you know if your request has been authorised. Please don't book any accommodation or travel before you have approval from your manager as we can't be held liable for any costs you incur if we can't grant your request.

Please note we will usually only allow one member of staff to be on holiday at any given time, except in exceptional circumstances, and holiday is allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis. If someone has already had leave approved on your chosen dates, it is highly likely we will refuse your request.

Ideally we need at least four weeks' notice of any holiday, although we may consider requests with shorter notice in exceptional circumstances.

Please don't plan to take more than 10 working days, or 2 consecutive weeks, off at any one time - if you do need a longer holiday period, please speak to your manager to explain your circumstances.

In exceptional circumstances we may allow unpaid leave over and above your holiday entitlement.

Please let us know as soon as possible, ideally on the day you start (or before!). We'll try to honour your holiday arrangement, but its likely to be unpaid leave as you won't have accrued enough holiday to be paid.

We might ask you to use any outstanding holiday during your notice period if its practical. If your employment starts or ends midway through a holiday year, we'll calculate your entitlement on a pro-rata basis for each complete month worked.

If you haven't taken all your holiday when your employment ends, you'll be paid for any accrued holiday up to the end date of your employment.

If you've taken more holiday than you've accrued, we'll deduct the value of any days taken in excess from your final wages (our deductions from wages clause in your contract allows us to do this). We'll let you know if we're going to do this and how much the deduction will be.

If you are absent due to family leave (such as maternity, adoption or shared parental leave) or sickness you continue to accrue holidays. Please speak to your manager about using your holidays and holiday pay.

Holidays are an important part of rest and recuperation and you should try to use them in the relevant holiday year. We don't normally permit holidays to be carried forward unless you've been unable to take them due to long term sickness absence or family leave, in which case you'll be allowed to carry them forward into the next holiday year.

Where you are permitted to carry forward holidays, any holidays booked will be deducted from the carried forward allowance first.