Navigating Employer Obligations: Christmas and New Year Public Holidays 2024/2025

As the festive season approaches, employers need to ensure they meet their obligations around annual closedowns, public holiday pay, and leave entitlements.

Here’s what you need to know for 2024/2025:

• Christmas Day: 25 December (Wednesday)
• Boxing Day: 26 December (Thursday)
• New Year’s Day: 1 January (Wednesday)
• Day after New Year’s Day: 2 January (Thursday)

Closing down over Christmas

You can have an annual closedown for your whole business or part of it but give employees at least 14 days’ notice in writing. You can ask staff to take their existing annual leave. If they don’t have leave left, they can take leave without pay or you can both agree to them taking annual leave in advance.

Payment of Annual Leave

Annual leave must be paid at the higher of the employee's ordinary pay (calculated on the last 4 weeks' average if their pay is not the same amount each period) or their average earnings (calculated on the average of the last 52 weeks' earnings).

Employees not entitled to annual holidays at the start of a closedown period must get paid 8% of their gross earnings as of the closedown date from

• the start of their employment if they haven’t worked continuously for 12 months for their employer, or
• their last anniversary date for annual holidays if they have already worked for their employer for at least 12 months, less any amount already paid as 8% pay as you go or already taken as annual holidays in advance.

Working on a Public Holiday

If an employee works on a public holiday, they should be paid time and a half for the time worked and receive an alternative day or day off in lieu on another day normally worked.

Casual/On Call Workers

Casual/On Call Workers are entitled to receive payment for a public holiday if it would otherwise have been a working day.  For example, if an employee can show a pattern of working on Mondays, they would more than likely be entitled to be paid for Christmas Boxing Day and New Year’s Day

In all other situations where there is no pattern of working a particular day – ideally, that should be the case with casuals! - they are entitled to be paid for time worked on a public holiday at the rate of time and a half.

Transferring the Observance of Public Holidays

Employers and employees can agree to transfer the observance of public holidays to another working day.  Any request must be considered in good faith and agreed upon with employees. This means that employees working on the day the public holiday is transferred would be paid time and a half for the time worked and receive an alternative day or day off in lieu.

Business Support: Member Resources

Eligible members can also download the following resources from the A-Z resources section of our website:

• Holidays Act guide
• Shop Trading Restrictions