The Government have finally offered clarification on holidays and people on furlough, which there was previous some confusion on. find out more on the link below.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-80-of-your-employees-wages-to-claim-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme#work-out-80-of-your-employees-usual-wage

Karen Kirby from Greenshoot HR has broken it down below:

Employees can take holiday during furlough.

• If they request holiday and you agree - the number of days comes off their entitlement (based on their contract).
• If you want them to use holiday entitlement, you must give them twice the notice of the length of holiday you want them to take. e.g. if you want them to take a week, you must give 2 weeks' notice. Remember, it wouldn't feel fair to ask them to take all their holiday entitlement at this time.
• You will need to pay them for holiday in the normal way. From 01.04.20, this needs to be the average of the last 52 weeks' earnings (excluding periods of SSP, SMP etc. and furlough) to give them their normal pay when on holiday (not necessarily their basic).
• This is likely to be more than 80% of the pre-19th March pay, which is what you use to calculate your claim for the grant via the CJRS.
• The additional cost of the difference is yours.
• Bank holidays - we've just had two in Easter and have two coming up in May (8th and 25th). If they take these days as holiday, you will need to pay them as above for those days (top up on the 80%), and the day will come off their entitlement.
• If you did not pay the Easter bank holidays, as above (i.e. 'top it up'), you should look to rectify in the next payroll.
• If you ignore bank holidays during the furlough period, just paying the 80% claimable under the grant, they will have that day to take later in the year (in a similar way to how they would if they worked the bank holiday).
• If you have staff on short-time working (rather than furlough), this is not a change to contracted hours and days, therefore, if you and they agree to take holiday, this should be paid as above. And in terms of entitlement, a week would be their normal week (not the short week); or they/you might use odd days of holiday to supplement the short-time working.
• If you and they have agreed to 'permanently' change their contracted days and hours, holiday will be based on this new contract.

If you would like to get in touch with Karen you can contact her on karenkirby@greenshoot.co.uk or 07817278659.