Annual leave allowance

How much annual leave you get is written in your employment contract.

It depends on:

• conditions of service
• grade
• length of service

You can check your contract or your annual leave entitlement in our Holiday policy (PDF, 145 KB).

Check how much annual leave you have left

You can check how much annual leave you have on My Oracle. 

Your absence balance is shown in hours and will include:

• any annual leave hours that you have bought
• bank holiday hours if you work part-time
• a deduction for any approved annual leave

You can use the annual leave conversion table (PDF, 188KB) to turn your hourly balance into days.

Sign in and select ‘Time and absences' then ‘Absence balance'.

Check your annual leave balance in My Oracle

Additional annual leave

You may be allowed to carry over some annual leave to the following year. This will be included in your balance.

You can also buy more annual leave. This will be included in your balance.

Managers may award up to two extra day's leave for employees who perform exceptionally well. This is managed locally between you and your manager, and is not added to your annual leave balance on My Oracle.

Annual leave and maternity or shared parental leave

Annual leave will continue to build up if you're on maternity leave or shared parental leave.

New starters taking annual leave

Your annual leave entitlement builds up each month during your first year of employment. This is at a rate of 1/12th of your leave entitlement.

If you book annual leave during your first month, you may be restricted by the amount of leave you have built up. However, your manager may allow you to take more.

We will try to honour commitments to pre-booked holidays.

After your first year, you can take your full leave entitlement from the beginning of the leave year.

Annual leave for leavers

If you are leaving the council, you should take any annual leave that you have built up during the leave year (since 1 April).

In some cases, you may be paid for untaken leave. If you've taken too much leave, this will be deducted from your final salary.

You should tell your manager as soon as you know your leaving date, so they can enter this on My Oracle. Once they've done this, your entitlement balance in My Oracle will be updated.

Read the full guidance in our holiday policy.

Guidance for managers

It's important to make sure that any outstanding leave balance is paid (or deducted if the employee has taken too much leave). Managers should follow this guidance if someone is leaving.

Sickness while on annual leave

If you fall ill or get injured during your annual leave, you may be able to swap your annual leave for the days you were ill and record the absence as sick leave instead.

Find out more about this on the reporting sickness absence page.

Long-term sickness

If you're on long-term sick leave, you will continue to build up annual leave. The amount of annual leave that you'll be entitled to will depend on when you return to work.

Check with your manager or our holiday policy.