In 2022 the people of the United Kingdom will enjoy an extra bank holiday as part of the celebration by a grateful nation of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Just a few weeks ago, as England’s national football team seemed to be heading for victory in the Euro 2020 tournament, Downing Street let it be known that consideration was being given to a one-off day off for the nation should that dream come true.

As healthandcare.scot has been finding out, additional public holidays come at a cost and create an additional challenge for care sector employers who want to be fair to their staff at the same time as ensuring there is no disruption to seven day a week care services.

One major care home company says an additional bank holiday is far from free – costing them more than £100,000 a year, while for people buying their own care it’s not just about cost, but also finding people to cover the shift.

At the beginning of June 2022, the UK will enjoy a four-day weekend to mark the historic milestone of the 75^th anniversary of the Queen’s reign. The May bank holiday weekend will be moved to Thursday 2^nd June and Friday 3^rd June will be an additional bank holiday.

For those working across Scotland’s care sector, it seems unlikely that many will be able to join the celebrations on those days, unless they choose to book the time off.

Caroline Dean is the Workforce Policy and Practice Lead for the independent sector representative organisation Scottish Care. She says it’s difficult for care services to treat public holidays differently from any other day:

“To my knowledge, certainly in homecare, staff do not receive the public holidays but have them included in the yearly entitlement of 5.6 weeks, which is 28 days, over the year – which is the statutory amount of holiday time allocated by the government.

“Should staff wish to take a public holiday, they must request it using the annual leave process that the organisation has in place to allocate staff time off.

“Rates of pay may vary per organisation, but most public holidays are paid at the standard hourly rate with no additional payment for working on a public holiday.”

Christmas and New Year, the only time when double time is routinely paid, can be particularly costly for employers not least as public sector commissioners do not pay any extra.

In planning terms, Christmas and New Year are no surprise to those planning budgets for the year ahead – who in 2022 will have to fund a further day off.

With 1,252 staff, 824 in direct caring roles, Renaissance Care says it makes a point of recognising current public holidays.

Executive Chair, Robert Kilgour told healthandcare.scot: “Care homes are people’s businesses, and our Renaissance Care staff are our biggest and most valuable company asset. Our amazing staff have been real heroes throughout this long and tragic pandemic journey – going above and beyond while looking after their second families.

“Post covid-19, we must all strive to value and pay our hard-working social care staff better as we all learn to cope with the new normal.”

This comes at a cost. Renaissance Care calculates that an extra day of holiday adds around £110,000 to its budget.

Other large social care organisations we approached declined to comment or put a figure on the additional cost of a single public holiday.

Speaking anonymously however, one leader said that the issue created a “conundrum” for them:

“No organisation wants to deny its staff the same benefits of working as counterparts in other sectors,” they said. However, they pointed out that with fixed funding, the tens of thousands of pounds spent on additional staffing to allow people the day off “had to be found from somewhere”.

They added the suggestion a few weeks ago that a celebratory extra public holiday be granted “out of the blue for a sporting victory, to be paid for out of this year’s budget”, was “not a great scenario”.

The care at home provider Everycare Edinburgh employs field staff who visit clients, some of whom are self-funding and others whose services are being paid for by the local council.

Managing Director, Martin Walker, says that combination helps them to pay more to staff who work on a bank holiday:

“Our client pricing reflects the fact that we pay enhanced bank holiday rates to the field staff on these days. So, in effect, the staff are paid more, and our charges reflect that.

“We also do work for the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) which will not pay us any form of a bank holiday uplift. Therefore, field staff do not receive enhanced rates for social service visits on bank holidays, and this is made clear to them before they start.

“Most field staff will attend to a mix of social services and private clients so will in effect, in most cases, benefit from an overall uplift on these days compared to a “normal” working day.

“CEC will also not pay us enhanced rates at Christmas and New Year. Everycare does, however, pay all field team members the full enhanced pay rates for social services clients that match the private client rates during the festive period, absorbing the costs of doing so.”

For personal assistants, public holidays are just another day. Colin Millar, Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Personal Assistant Employers’ Network (SPAEN), says an additional public holiday can be a “logistical nightmare” for people employing their own carers – whose support needs “don’t take the day off” and who have limited scope to pay an enhanced rate in lieu of a day off, or find someone else to step in.

“Most paid and unpaid carers have very little alternative but to continue doing the ‘day job’ of keeping people, safe, healthy and secure in their homes and communities and will miss the opportunity to join others in enjoying an extra day off.

According to SPAEN, Self-Directed Support (SDS) budgets are meant to be calculated in a way that provides sufficient finance for employers to meet all their legal duties and obligations, effectively the bare minimum required by law.

As a result, the costs of additional time off will come from a person’s individual budget.

On an average hourly rate at the Scottish Living Wage of £9.50, this costs around £13 per hour for every hour worked. For someone receiving one-to-one, around-the-clock care, an extra public holiday will cost an additional £290 per carer.

Asked whether additional funds have been made available in the past for extra bank holidays, for instance for the marriage of Prince William, none of the operators we spoke to said there had been any additional money available through SDS or from the health and social care partnerships commissioning the service.

 

Read more: Pam Duncan-Glancy: Where’s the care restart?; Insight: Better breaks for unpaid carers; Insight: The true cost of care;

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