I think employers should consider how much it will cost them in terms of goodwill and how many people are going to call in sick or sneak off to watch it anyway, and I would strongly recommend that people be given the day off wherever possible.

However, of course there are some businesses where it’s not possible to shut down completely – airlines still have to fly, hospitals still have to treat patients – so there are lots of employees who have it in their contract that they are required to work on bank holidays if necessary, for which they will get a day off somewhere else.

It’s up to employers to negotiate with their staff. So if you can’t close down because you’ve got deadlines to meet, you need to communicate with people and in the first instance look for volunteers.

If you don’t get enough volunteers, and you still need more people to come in, offer to set up a television screen so that staff who are interested can watch the wedding.

There are lots of things you can do to keep people happy without having to close down for the day.

However, I would strongly recommend that even if you do have to stay open, you recognise it as a bank holiday and give people an extra day in lieu, as the potential damage to your staff relations could far outweigh the cost of giving people an additional day off.

Until the working time directive, there was no legal requirement for employers to give bank holidays off, but what that did was enshrine those eight public holidays in the minimum annual leave requirement, which is 28 days for full-time staff and includes eight days for bank holidays.

So in effect all employees are guaranteed time off for bank holidays, but the time off doesn’t necessarily have to be taken on the bank holiday days.

Days off in lieu
This means that if you were a business that required 24-7 working, you could still be open on bank holidays, and your staff would be able to take the eight days off at some other point.

However, some contracts will state that an employee is entitled to a set number of days off plus bank holidays, which would be very difficult legally and certainly open to challenge if they were then denied 29 April off, as it has been declared a bank holiday.

The other point if you’re working shifts is that there will be some people not scheduled to work that day, in which case it’s down to the individual employer to negotiate with their staff.

Again, communication is key, but when a national extra bank holiday has been declared, if you’re the employer that doesn’t give your employees the day off then I think you’ll face the consequences sooner or later.

Angela Baron is  CIPD Adviser at Employee Resourcing