Is my boss taking the piss?

Out of my 20 days allowance i have to reserve 3 or 4 days where the office is closed but they're not public holidays around the xmas period… is this common?

Same in my office aswell, I usually end up using mine though and work the x-mas days unpaid.

Same here.

We don't get any public/bank holidays at all. There is an enforced shutdown over Xmas, but that comes out of our normal holiday allowance.

I used to have this, I think if you insist then they will have to let you work the days over xmas. Someone at my old place did and as far as I know just came into work at xmas when nothing was happening and sat there all day in order to get holiday another time.

Doing that makes you look like a cock, I find getting "flu" for a week when the sun's out is a much better career move.

From ACAS…

Most workers – whether part-time or full-time – are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid annual leave. Additional annual leave may be agreed as part of a worker's contract. A week's leave should allow workers to be away from work for a week – ie it should be the same amount of time as the working week. If a worker does a five-day week, he or she is entitled to 28 days leave. If he or she does a three-day week, the entitlement is 16.8 days leave. Employers can set the times that workers take their leave, for example for a Christmas shutdown. If a worker's employment ends, he or she has a right to be paid for the leave time due and not taken.

(And the 28 days leave include all statutory holidays too, so 20 days is a legal minimum). We actually give our employees Christmas off* on top of their leave but it is discretionary so we can make them come in if we need them to.

*The bit between Christmas and the new year

Yes, very common and perfectly legal IIRC. Same as sites that have factory shutdowns over summer.

They do this at my wifes work.

I'm not sure if it's true but I was told that your employer is allowed to allocate all of your holiday entitlement , it's just a case of put up with it I suppose.

I have trouble getting to book all my holiday , we get 23 days and I buy back another 7 via a weekly reduction in wages and all the decent days get booked 🙁

Quite standard – we close over Xmas because mostly its not worth being open, but give the staff it as an extra.
I've just had 10 days off, during which I worked over 40 hours – which was nice.

yep, perfectly normal.