Bank holidays

Any right to take an extra day’s holiday to compensate for any bank holiday that falls during maternity leave is likely to depend on the employment contract and any collective agreements or policies. Some collective agreements expressly provide for bank holidays to be accrued, just like ordinary holiday days during maternity leave. For example, recent changes to the NHS rules on maternity leave and holiday entitlement, implemented on 1 August 2016, mean that NHS staff in England and Wales who are on maternity leave, both paid and unpaid, will accrue public holidays as well as their annual leave, bringing the position into line with that of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

If there is no contractual right for women to accrue bank holidays during maternity leave, it could be maternity discrimination not to allow women on maternity leave to do this, on the basis that the reason why they are losing out on paid bank holidays is that they are on maternity leave.