National agreement - holiday pay

The National Staff Council has reached an agreement to make corrective payments to staff in relation to the calculation of holiday pay. The NHS Terms and Conditions of Service states that when you take holiday, it should be paid as if you are in work but historically this has not included recognition of overtime payments which are regularly worked.

The national agreement is applicable to full time and part time substantive staff employed at 31^st March 2021 and will be calculated over the last two financial years.  There are some eligibility criteria which need to be met, linked with the regularity of overtime working. The full details of the agreement and supporting FAQs can be found on the NHS Employers website by following this link.

The agreement gives employers until the end of September to make the payments due under the national agreement. The agreement covers the period up until 31^st March 2021, which means that individual calculations can’t be worked out until final overtime payments have been made through payroll and this will not be until at least the end of April. 

We will then need to work through the calculation for all staff, looking at their payment history over the last two years, ensuring that any payments already made for overruns are offset against the final amount. We want to resolve this issue for staff as soon as we can but we also need to ensure that payments are correct and as you can imagine this is a big piece of work. Further information will be shared with you in due course on when the payments will be processed. 

The information available on the NHS Employer website includes a lot of FAQs which will hopefully answer any questions you may have about the agreement.

I am sure we all welcome the agreement as it helps us all to ensure a consistent approach across the NHS and shows the benefits of working together to resolve matters.

Published 15th March 2021