Do you pay SSP or higher? If it's SSP, then it's calendar weeks. If it's an occupational scheme, it will depend on how it's worded (or in the absence of specific wording, how it's been interpreted in the past).

Pragmatically and in the absence of a procedure, I'd treat this as one period of sickness absence, but ensure that any reduced sick pay is upgraded to full pay for holiday weeks.

Good luck.

Nina

Hi Chloe

We take a different approach to Nina - we apply the national T&Cs for staff - this means for teachers sick pay during holidays is at the rate paid on the last contractual working day e.g. if teacher is on half sick pay the day before a holiday, this rate is paid for the duration of the full holiday period. This is because teachers sick pay entitlement is based on contractual working days.

For support staff, we pay the relevant rate for the whole sickness period e.g. in your scenario if an employee is on half pay, this would be paid for the holidays too. However, if a fit note ends in the middle of a holiday period, the employee reverts back to normal pay. This is because the support staff sick pay entitlement is based on calendar months.

We also make it clear that if an employee is off directly before a holiday and continues to be off immediately after, this counts as one period and if the period is more than 7 calendar days then a fit note is required from the 8th calendar forward.

Kim

In reply to Kimberly:

Hi Kim,

I should say that our contracts (that I've inherited) don't differentiate between "holiday pay" that is statutory (so has to be at full pay) and pay during the holidays that is not statutory. Hence we have to pay at full pay for the holidays currently - but amending our contracts is definitely on my to do list.

Nina

In reply to Nina Waters:

Hi Nina

Definitely a lot of historic oversights to work through in education. We tackled this subject recently recently and even today I was challenged by management on including certain days in pay and triggers so it's not only staff we battle on this one!

Always good to hear how others do it too.

Thx
K