It’s down to you and the contract rules for when they take these days. Most employees have no free standing right to take public/bank holidays on specific days.

Most people wouldn’t allow the carry over to be more than five regardless.

I would give the employee a pro rata bank holiday allowance, which they could then use when they want to. I assume their annual holiday is calculated on working 4 days a week. Add 6.5 bank holidays to it (or 7.5 this year because of the Jubilee).

I agree with Elizabeth.

It helps to think of public holidays as simply part of the holiday allowance that is pre-booked. If people don't work on a public holiday, they don't have to pre-book it so that day remains available to them to book later.

In this case, of course, it is worth remembering that 1 day, for an employee on compressed hours, represents more actual *hours* of work lost than for a employee working M-F. So it becomes important that, when a compressed-hours worker takes holiday, they give up the same proportion of their entitlement as any other full-time worker. If 1 day=1 day, the compressed hours worker ends up taking off more time, per annum, than the regular hours worker. If you measure holiday in hours, of course, this won't be a problem.

I work compressed hours which means my leave is calculated in hours and not days. 1 day = 8 hours for me as I work a 9 day fortnight. The equivalent hours for all bank holidays are added to my leave at the start of the leave year and whenever a BH falls on a day I would normally work it is taken out of my leave. If it falls on my non-working day then it is not. In this way the BH hours are in my annual leave allowance.