Three questions dominate the contract queries we hear from UK independent dental practices: what happens with bank holidays, who’s entitled to sick pay, and how to change someone’s terms without creating a dispute. None of them are exotic legal problems — but all three are easy to get wrong in the day-to-day reality of running a busy practice, and the cost of getting them wrong tends to show up later, when it’s harder to fix.
Bank holidays and annual leave: it’s about the contract, not the calendar
There’s no automatic legal right to have bank holidays off, paid or otherwise — what matters is what the contract actually says. Some contracts name specific bank holidays as paid leave. Others state a total annual leave figure “including bank holidays” and leave it to the employer to decide how those days are used within that total.
This distinction matters most when the government adds an extra bank holiday, as happens periodically for coronations, jubilees, and similar one-off events. If your contracts name specific bank holidays, you may have no automatic obligation to grant a newly announced one. If your contracts state an inclusive total, the extra day usually needs to come from within the existing allowance, not on top of it.
Accrual causes just as much confusion, particularly for part-time nurses, hygienists, or receptionists. The statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks’ leave, pro-rated for hours worked — not a rough fraction based on days worked. Someone working three days a week doesn’t automatically get three-fifths of a full-timer’s allowance; it needs to be calculated properly, especially where hours vary week to week. Under-calculating leave is a breach of the Working Time Regulations, and it tends to surface at the worst possible time: when someone leaves and disputes their final pay.
What to check now: whether your contracts name specific bank holidays or state an inclusive total, and whether your accrual approach for part-time and variable-hours staff is written down and applied consistently.
Sick pay and SSP: simple in theory, inconsistent in practice
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) has changed significantly. Since reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 came into force on 6 April 2026, the lower earnings limit and the three-day waiting period have both been removed. Employers can no longer rely on waiting days or earnings thresholds to limit exposure, and payroll systems need to apply the new percentage-based calculation accurately across different pay profiles. In practice, this means SSP is now payable from the very first day of sickness absence, and every employee is eligible regardless of how much they earn — those on lower earnings receive 80% of their average weekly earnings or the statutory flat rate, whichever is lower, rather than being excluded altogether.
This is a real shift for practice managers to plan for. SSP now applies to odd single days off sick, not just longer absences, which can noticeably increase both the frequency and cost of claims — particularly for practices with a lot of part-time or lower-paid staff. It’s worth reviewing your sickness absence policy now to remove any references to waiting days or earnings thresholds, so managers aren’t applying rules that no longer exist.
Many practices offer contractual sick pay above the statutory minimum — which is entirely reasonable, but only works fairly if the qualifying criteria (length of service, notification requirements, whether it’s discretionary) are written down and applied the same way every time.
That last point is where most of the real risk sits. The most common mistake isn’t a miscalculated SSP figure — it’s inconsistency: enhanced sick pay granted informally to one team member, then declined for another in a similar situation. That’s exactly the kind of pattern that turns into a grievance.
What to check now: whether your enhanced sick pay scheme (if you have one) is written down with clear qualifying criteria, and whether it’s being applied the same way across your whole team.
Changing contracts: why a change letter alone isn’t enough
At some point, most practices need to update someone’s terms — new hours, a revised pay structure, changed duties. The instinct is often to send a letter confirming the new terms and treat it as done. That’s one of the riskiest habits in dental practice HR, because a contract is an agreement, not a document you can amend unilaterally just because it would be convenient.
Even small changes generally need the employee’s agreement, a contractual clause that specifically permits the change, or a fair and properly managed process if agreement can’t be reached. Skipping straight to a change letter can leave staff feeling blindsided, and leaves the practice exposed if the employee doesn’t accept the change and later raises a grievance.
A proper process looks like: identifying a genuine business reason for the change, consulting with the affected employee before anything is decided, giving them a real chance to respond, and confirming any agreed changes in writing. Where agreement can’t be reached, that’s the point to get advice before imposing anything — this is where legal and reputational risk both increase sharply, particularly in a small, close-knit practice team.
Trainee and apprentice dental nurse contracts deserve a specific mention here, because they often interact with training agreements and funding conditions that don’t apply to the rest of your team. Any change needs checking against the training scheme itself, not just standard employment law.
What to check now: before any contract change goes out, confirm there’s a genuine business reason, a consultation has actually happened, and the employee’s had a real chance to respond.
The common thread
All three of these issues share the same underlying pattern: the problem usually isn’t malice or negligence, it’s a policy that was never quite written down, or a template that’s been reused without checking it still fits. Getting ahead of that — reviewing contracts, formalising sick pay rules, building a proper consultation habit — is far cheaper than resolving a dispute after the fact.
How Agilio can help: These are exactly the queries our dental-specific HR Consultants handle for UK independent practices every week — because generic HR advice doesn’t always account for how bank holidays, sick pay, and contract variations actually play out in a dental setting. If you’re not certain how your contracts handle any of the above, or you’re about to make a change and want to get the process right first time, speak to our HR experts before it becomes a bigger problem than it needed to be.