Public holidays in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, public holidays are days on which most businesses and non-essential services are closed. Many retail businesses (especially the larger ones) do open on some of the public holidays. There are restrictions on trading on Sundays, Easter and Christmas Day in England and Wales and on New Year's Day and Christmas Day in Scotland. Public holidays defined by statute are called "bank holidays", but this term can also be used to include common law holidays, which are held by convention. The term "public holidays" can refer exclusively to common law holidays.
There is no automatic right to paid time off on these days, or any right to a holiday at all, but banks close and the majority of the working population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contracts. Before 1980, collective agreements widely included public holidays as part of a standard entitlement to time off. Schedule 11 of the Employment Protection Act 1975 enabled mandatory extension of collective agreements across sectors, but this was repealed with effect from 1980, and the Fair Wages Resolution 1946 (affecting public sector contracts) was repealed with effect from 1983. This meant there was no effective legal mechanism for holidays until the Working Time Regulations 1998, based on the Working Time Directive restored 20 and then 28 days paid holidays - however employers do not need to grant paid holidays on public holiday days.
There are eight bank holidays a year in England and Wales, nine in Scotland and ten in Northern Ireland. Additional days have been allocated for special events, such as royal weddings, coronations, and jubilees. There are seven bank holidays common to all jurisdictions: New Year's Day, Good Friday, the early May bank holiday (May Day), the Spring bank holiday, the Summer bank holiday, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. Easter Monday is a bank holiday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but not in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, St Patrick's Day and Orangemen's Day are also bank holidays. In Scotland, 2 January and St Andrew's Day are bank holidays. The Summer bank holiday varies according to jurisdiction: in Scotland, it is on the first Monday in August, and in the rest of the United Kingdom, it is on the last Monday in August.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Good Friday and Christmas Day are common law holidays, having been customary holidays since time immemorial.
The first official bank holidays were named in the Bank Holidays Act 1871, introduced by Liberal politician and banker Sir John Lubbock. Under the Act, "no person was compelled to make any payment or to do any act upon a bank holiday which he would not be compelled to do or make on Christmas Day or Good Friday, and the making of a payment or the doing of an act on the following day was equivalent to doing it on the holiday". People were so grateful that some called the first bank holidays St Lubbock's Days for a while.
The Act did not include Good Friday and Christmas Day as bank holidays in England, Wales, or Ireland because they were already recognised as common law holidays.
In 1903, the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act added 17 March, Saint Patrick's Day, as a bank holiday in Ireland only. New Year's Day did not become a bank holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until 1 January 1974. Boxing Day did not become a bank holiday in Scotland until 1974.
Starting in 1965, experimentally, the August Bank Holiday weekend was observed at the end of August "to give a lead in extending British holidays over a longer summer period". Each year's date was announced in Parliament on an ad hoc basis, to the despair of the calendar and diary publishing trade. The rule seems to have been to select the weekend of the last Saturday in August, so that in 1968 and 1969 Bank Holiday Monday actually fell in September.
A century after the 1871 act, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 (c. 80), which currently regulates bank holidays in the UK, was passed. The majority of the current bank holidays were specified in the 1971 Act: however New Year's Day and May Day were not introduced throughout the whole of the UK until 1974 and 1978 respectively. The date of the August bank holiday was changed from the first Monday in August to the last Monday in August in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (but not in Scotland), and the Whitsun bank holiday (Whit Monday) was replaced by the Late Spring Bank Holiday, fixed as the last Monday in May. From 1978, the final Monday of May in Scotland (a statutory holiday in the rest of the UK) and the first Monday in May in the rest of the UK (a statutory holiday in Scotland) have been proclaimed as bank holidays.
In January 2007, the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007 was given royal assent, making 30 November (or the following Monday if 30 November falls on a weekend) a bank holiday in Scotland.
There are calls for extra public holidays on the patron saints' days in England (for St. George's Day), and Wales (for St. David's Day). For example, in 2018 the Labour Party announced it would make those days bank holidays if elected. The same year, an online petition to the Prime Minister as to Wales received 3,577 signatures.
In 2009, it was reported that St Piran's Day (patron saint of Cornwall) on 5 March is already given as an unofficial day off to many government and other workers in the county. It is suggested that a move from the May bank holiday to a St Piran's Day bank holiday in Cornwall would benefit the Cornish economy by £20–35 million.
The number of holidays in the UK is relatively small compared to many other European countries. However, direct comparison is inaccurate since the 'substitute day' scheme of deferment does not apply in most European countries, where holidays that coincide with a weekend (29% of fixed-date holidays) are "lost". In fact, the average number of non-weekend holidays in such countries is only marginally higher (and in some cases lower) than the UK. Worth mentioning is that public holidays in Europe which fall on Thursday or Tuesday typically become "puente" or "bridge" four-day or even six-day extended holiday weekends as people tend to use one or two days from their holiday entitlement to take off Monday and/or Friday.
After the election of the coalition government in May 2010, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport launched a pre-consultation in 2011 which included the suggestion of moving the May Day Bank Holiday to October, to be a "UK Day" or "Trafalgar Day" (21 October) or to St David's Day and St George's Day.
Bank holidays are established in several ways:
Royal proclamation is also used to move bank holidays that would otherwise fall on a weekend and to create extra one-off bank holidays for special occasions. The Act does not provide for a bank holiday to be suppressed by royal proclamation without appointing another day in its place. In this way, public holidays are not "lost" in years when they coincide with weekends. These deferred bank holiday days are termed a "bank holiday in lieu" of the typical anniversary date. In the legislation they are known as "substitute days". The movement of the St Andrew's Day Scottish holiday to the nearest Monday when 30 November is a weekend day is statutory and does not require a proclamation. Bank holidays falling on a weekend are always moved to a later date, not an earlier one.
Although there is no statutory right for workers to take paid leave on bank holidays, where paid leave is given (either because the business is closed or for other reasons), the bank holiday can count towards the minimum statutory holiday entitlement. Likewise, if people are required to work on a bank holiday, there is no statutory right to an enhanced pay rate nor to a day off in lieu, although many employers do give either or both. Any rights in this respect depend on the person's contract of employment. The statutory minimum paid holidays is 28 days (or 5.6 weeks) a year under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (including any bank holidays or public holidays that are taken).
Local holidays are determined by local authorities across Scotland. Some of these may be taken in lieu of statutory holidays while others may be additional holidays, although many companies, including Royal Mail, do not follow all the holidays listed below, and many swap between English and local holidays.
Since Easter 1996 the Scottish clearing banks have harmonised the days on which they are closed with those in England and Wales and are therefore closed on Easter Monday and the last Monday in August (rather than the first). This has resulted in a number of local authorities creating a public holiday on Easter Monday. Previously Easter Monday had not been a public holiday in Scotland.
There have been protests about banks opening on 2 January since this decision was taken. This has resulted in many banks now providing only a limited service on 2 January, with most members of staff still entitled to the holiday.