Consultation on holiday entitlement

The government is keen to ensure that no workers are forced to count time taken off on bank holidays as annual leave and is thus proposing increasing statutory paid leave from four weeks to 5.6 weeks (from 20 to 28 days) a year. Having launched an initial consultation on increasing holiday entitlement in 2006 (Consultation on increasing holiday entitlement), it has now published its response and launched a further consultation, this time on detailed proposals and draft Regulations¹.

The government proposes to amend the Working Time Regulations 1998 to increase annual leave entitlement from four weeks to 4.8 weeks from 1 October 2007, and to 5.6 weeks from 1 October 2008, subject to a maximum statutory entitlement of 28 days.