Tis that time of year again. Time to sort your holidays for the holidays.

December 26th, besides being my birthday is the last bank holiday of the year. This year it falls on a Saturday which makes the “how many days off do I take?” question a bit more tricky to answer.

Citizens Information website to the rescue. Fair play to them, information is there in black and white and tells us that as the bank holiday falls on a weekend day, we are not automatically granted a bank holiday on the following Monday, as you may have thought. Here’s the skinny:

Public holidays falling on a weekend

Where a public holiday falls on a weekend, you do not have any automatic legal entitlement to have the next working day off work. This occurs in 2009 when St Stephen’s Day (26 December) falls on a Saturday. This means that Monday 28 December 2009 is not a public holiday. When this happens you are entitled to the normal alternative arrangements concerning employment and public holidays that is:

• A paid day off within a month of the public holiday
• An additional day of annual leave
• An additional day’s pay
• The nearest church holiday to the public holiday as a paid day off.

Your employer can require you to attend work on those days.