Annual leave and public holidays

I have been unable to take planned annual leave because of the COVID19 crisis. Will I lose this leave?

With regard to your individual 2019-20 leave year (i.e. for leave accrued from 2019 through to 2020), where you have been unable to take your full annual leave entitlement as a consequence of Covid 19, you will be entitled to carry forward all untaken leave into your 2020-21 leave year and it will be added to your existing contractual entitlement. The carried forward leave can either be taken as annual leave or you can request payment for the full amount of carried forward leave, or you can opt to request payment for some of the days and take the remainder as annual leave. An update to this policy was produced by the Scottish Government (Scottish Government DL (2020) 16 on 10th June, 2020. This can be found HERE. A further update to this policy was produced by the Scottish Government on 17th July 2020. This can be found HERE.

I had to work on a public holiday that I was supposed to have off. Will I get this back?

Doctors and dentists in training are entitled to a day in lieu if they are required to work on a public holiday.

I had planned to take annual leave in the next few months. Will I still be able to take this leave?

This will depend on the pressure on the clinical service where you are working during the COVID19 pandemic. In order to look after your own wellbeing, leave is important and we would encurage you to use up any leave that you are due as soon as is practical to ensure your own wellbeing, particularly if  your clinical service is quiet and there are enough doctors to cover the work.