Paid Leave

You are entitled to four weeks paid leave per year, which will begin to accrue from the start of your contract. For the purposes of calculating your holiday entitlement, your leave year commences on the date that you start an assignment or a series of assignments. Clients should always be notified of your intention to take holiday as a matter of courtesy.

Entitlement to leave accrues in proportion to the amount of time you have worked continuously on assignments throughout the year. The amount of the payment you receive is dependent upon the average number of hours you have worked in the twelve weeks prior to claiming annual leave.

EXAMPLE 1: Joe Smith has been working for 13 weeks and requests one week’s annual leave. For the first 10 weeks of his assignment Joe worked 37.5 hours per week and on the eleventh and twelfth week he worked 30 hours per week. Therefore Joe’s average weekly hours over the 12-week period were 36.25 (total of 435 hours worked divided by 12). In this instance Joe’s holiday pay for the week would amount to 36.25 hours multiplied by his basic hourly rate.

EXAMPLE 2: Jane Doe has been working for 13 weeks and requests one week’s annual leave. For the first 10 weeks of her assignment Jane worked 37.5 hours per week and on the eleventh and twelfth week she worked 45 hours per week. Therefore Jane’s average weekly hours over the 12-week period were 38.75 (total of 455 hours worked divided by 12). In this instance Jane’s holiday pay for the week would amount to 38.75 hours multiplied by her basic hourly rate.

You can claim annual leave at any point during your assignment; however you will only be able to be paid for holiday when you have accrued that entitlement. For example, if you wished to take ten days annual leave and have only accrued eight days, you would be paid eight days annual leave and the other two days would be unpaid.

If you really do not want to take annual leave but wish to continue working, you will still be entitled to the pay accrued. However, we must insist that you sign a disclaimer, which can be found here .

Please click here for an electronic version of our Paid Leave Request Form.

Please note: You will not be paid for public holidays when you have not worked unless you have completed a Paid Leave Request Form and it will then count as part of your annual entitlement.

Further information can be found at http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/employment-legislation/working-time-regs

Sickness

If for any reason you are unable to work, please telephone us immediately as well as your line manager. This ensures we work to our service level agreements with our customers.

We do not operate a Company Sick Pay Scheme; however, you may be eligible for Statutory Sick Pay. To qualify for SSP you must have:

• been sick for at least 4 days in a row
• been employed when you became sick
• been earning enough on average for it to be relevant for NI purposes (this is lower than the amount when you start paying NI contributions).

You can get SSP for up to 28 weeks in one spell of sickness (spells of at least 4 days in a row with 8 weeks or less between them are counted as one spell).

You must meet the basic criteria above to qualify. However, this does not guarantee that you will be entitled to SSP as the rules for benefits mean that your individual circumstances may affect the amount you can get.

Claimants must complete a SSP form which is available from the DSS or a copy can be printed from their website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/lifeevent/benefits/statutory_sick_pay.asp