Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has notified staff to (a) tell or (b) remind them that they can sell annual leave in the last four months.

There is no central policy on buying/selling leave; instead, departments may consider introducing this benefit under their own delegated authority.

The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) recently launched a buy/selling of leave policy for the 2022 annual leave year. The policy was introduced to allow BEIS employees to exercise greater flexibility within their total reward package.

All eligible BEIS staff were informed that they were able to access the benefit portal during a three-week window, to register their request to buy or sell up to 5 days (full time equivalent) annual leave. The three-week window ran from 3^rd January 2023 to 23^rd January 2023.

BEIS issued communications via our Intranet platform on the 22^nd November, the 16^th December and a final reminder on the 5^th January 2023.