Enjoy the Jubilee but check your contracts as well

This year and last year have both had additional bank holidays. Last year there was Royal Wedding bank holiday and this coming week we will be having the Jubilee bank holiday. These extra bank holidays have meant that employment lawyers up and down the country have been able to write articles about whether employers are obliged to allow employees to have the time off work and whether it should be paid. I myself wrote a brief article on this subject myself when working for a previous employer.

The answer is fairly straightforward - it depends on the wording of the contract as to whether the employmer is required to give their employees the time off. What this topic actually highlights is the need for employment contracts to be carefully drafted as some employers can be quite unhappy at the prospect of paying employees for taking an extra day of  holiday. The need for this was also highlighted in the case of Cavenagh v William Evans Limited which the Court of Appeal ruled on last month.

Mr Cavenagh had been made redundant by William Evans Limited and under his contract of employment he was entitled to be paid in lieu of notice. After terminating his employment, but before making the PILON the Company discovered that Mr Cavenagh had a few months previously arranged for a payment to be paid by the Company into his pension fund and this payment had not been properly authorised. The Company decided to withhold the PILON monies on the grounds that Mr Cavenagh would have been dismissed for gross misconduct without notice had they known of the unauthorised payment. Mr Cavenagh sued the Company for breach of contract.

The Court of Appeal found in favour of Mr Cavenagh saying that there was a contractual agreement to pay him these monies and there were no provisions in his contract to allow recovery of the monies if misconduct was subsequently discovered.

The above case and the Jubilee Bank Holiday shows that employment contracts need to be carefully drafted. They also need to be regularly reviewed as employment law does change over time. Getting a solicitor to draft and review your employment contracts can seem to be an unnecessary expense; however, it can save you money in the long term.