How Bank Holidays and the Platinum Jubilee Affect Payroll

6 February 2022 marked an incredible 70 years of Her Majesty The Queen’s service to the Crown and what a remarkable feat that is. With this in mind, the UK is having an extra bank holiday this year, to celebrate Britain’s longest reigning monarch. The Spring Bank holiday that usually lands at the end of May has been moved to Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th June and combined with an extra bank holiday to celebrate the Jubilee, creating a 4-day bank holiday.

The Platinum Jubilee bank holiday is in place for communities and areas to come together to celebrate and reflect on the duty and service that The Queen has carried out.

Bank holidays do impact some types of payrolls, so it’s important that your company has everything in order for the Platinum Jubilee and also for future bank holidays, so that employees get paid accurately and on time.

Weekly Payrolls

If your company pays some of your employees weekly then BACS processing dates will be different when taking the Platinum Jubilee into account. 

For example:

• For employees pay to be paid on Wednesday 1 June, information needs to be sent to BACS by Monday 30 May.
• For employees pay to be paid on Monday 6 June, information needs to be sent to BACS by Tuesday 31 May.
• For employees pay to be paid on Tuesday 7 June, information needs to be sent to BACS by Wednesday 1 June.
• For employees pay to be paid on Wednesday 8 June, information needs to be sent to BACS Monday 6 June.

If your payrolls are going to be affected by the bank holidays, then it’s essential that you start planning and accommodating these changes. When you work with a payroll solutions provider, they will have already been in contact to help you manage these changes and alert you to specific dates of importance.

Transparency and Communication

It’s really important that if there are going to be any changes to payments dates, especially if you use weekly payrolls, that you communicate this to your employees with enough of a notice period for them to get their affairs in order. Employees will have all sorts of financial obligations and payments that may need to be rearranged or tweaked if they will be receiving different payments and different timeframes for those payments.

Cashflow and budgeting are integral considerations for every employee, so it’s in your duty of care as an employer to accommodate and recognise this. Communicate any changes to your employees as soon as possible, which gives them enough time to plan and note down revised dates.

Here at APS Global, we work with all of our clients to take their unique business requirements into account, which means that if they have payrolls that will be affected by bank holidays etc, we will work in advance to make it a seamless process for employee and employees.

For more information about managing your payroll, get in touch with our experienced team today.