Employees can purchase up to twice their maximum weekly contracted hours in additional annual leave (maximum 74 hours) pro rata for part time staff. This includes employees on flexible working schemes.
Eligibility criteria
Requests are subject to:
- meeting the National Minimum Wage requirements
- managers agreement taking account of operational and budget considerations
Managers will therefore need to assess impact on service delivery as no financial reimbursement for backfill will be provided. Where approval is given managers must agree when employees can take this leave.
Term time staff
It may be difficult to accommodate the purchase of additional annual leave for employees on term-time contracts. Managers may exercise discretion in approving this.
Salary sacrifice
We provide the cost of purchasing annual leave through salary sacrifice. It is an agreement with employees to ‘give up’ part of their salary in exchange for a non-cash benefit and vary their contract of employment. Employees agree to give up part of their contractual salary in return for benefits of an equivalent value. Because your gross salary is reduced this means employees pay a lower amount of tax and National Insurance.
The calculations for the purchase of additional leave are based on your ‘notional’ current salary before any sacrifice/deductions are made.
Lincolnshire County Council has a duty to ensure that a salary sacrifice scheme, such as the purchasing additional annual leave scheme, does not reduce an employee's cash earnings to below the National Minimum Wage rates.
Where you are part of any other of the Council’s salary sacrifice schemes we will need to check that this additional purchase of annual leave does not put you below the National Minimum Wage. If it does your application will not be able to be approved in its current form.
However, you may still have options, for further details visit:
- Salary Sacrifice Schemes and National Minimum Wage: What You Need to Know
- Salary sacrifice for employers - GOV.UK
How to purchase additional leave
Employees should request to purchase additional leave via the online form during the available window in April/May, which is available here
Employees must take additional annual leave purchased under this scheme within the leave year.
Cost of additional leave
We will use the salary as at 1 April of the relevant annual leave year to calculate the cost of the additional leave.
We will deduct the cost of the purchased annual leave from an employee's salary in ten monthly payments with the first monthly payment commencing in June.
If an employee purchases additional annual leave and then changes job roles or working hours within the council the payment amount will not change. They will pay at the original rate for the remainder of that leave year.
| Example actual salary based on G6 SCP 18 | Contracted hours per week | Cost of one hour | Number of hours bought | Total cost | Monthly cost for 10 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £32,597 | 37 | £16.90 | 37 | £625.30 | £62.53 |
| £14,977 | 22 | £13.05 | 6 | £78.30 | £7.83 |
The cost of one hour is calculated by (salary / 52.143 / number of contracted hours per week).
By completing and submitting the form employees are consenting to the applicable salary deduction.
Business World
Any additional leave purchased will be added to the leave adjustment line on your Annual Leave balance on Business World by the end of June to give a total entitlement for the year. If this has not happened by the end of June please contact corporatehradminsupp@lincolnshire.gov.uk
Purchased additional leave will be deemed to have been taken prior to any normal annual leave.
Should an employee leave the council part way through the leave year the manager must notify payroll via a leavers form of any remaining annual leave balance.
If an employee leaves and owes money for additional annual leave, we will deduct this from their final salary. By submitting the request for additional leave form, the employee is giving their consent for this.
Any additional leave bought will be added to the leave adjustment part of the annual leave balance on Business World to give a total entitlement for the year. Purchased additional leave will be deemed to have been taken prior to any normal annual leave.
Should an employee leave the council part way through the leave year the manager must notify payroll via a leavers form of any remaining annual leave balance.