Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has announced a national holiday in 2022 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne. The Platinum Jubilee event will take place across a four-day Bank Holiday weekend.

How will you cope?

What’s so unusual?

The lengthy 2022 celebration — created by moving the May Bank Holiday to Thursday 2 June and declaring an additional Bank Holiday on Friday 3 June — is unusual, although not entirely unprecedented.

Britain previously enjoyed a four-day Diamond Jubilee weekend in celebration of the sixtieth year of the Queen’s reign in 2012.

What’s all the fuss about?

Diamond Jubilees are rare enough, but with the Platinum Jubilee the Queen will leave the 62-year record of Britain’s previous winner, her several-times-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, in the dust. She’s now one of a vanishingly small company of ruling record-holders. 2022 will see her surpass both Johann II of Lichtenstein (reigned 1858 to 1929) and Bhumibol of Thailand (1946 to 2016). That leaves Louis XIV of France (1643 to 1715) as her sole rival in the long service stakes.

The Queen is on course to surpass Louis’ 72 years on the throne in 2024…  but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

What should we expect?

To mark the 70-year milestone, we’re promised an extensive programme of public events mixing traditional pageantry with cutting-edge technology. The DCMS has made reference to “spectacular moments” in London and other major cities across the UK and the Commonwealth, to be achieved with input from “the UK’s leading creative minds, event organisers and world class digital design companies.”

Let’s hope the ceremonies can match those of the 2012 Olympics! And, more prosaically, let’s hope that UK personnel departments can rise to the challenge.

What will be the costs?

There is a downside to all this. Bank holidays take a sizeable bite out of Britain’s productivity. The extra day’s shutdown that marked the 2012 Diamond Jubilee weekend occasioned dire economic warnings from Mervyn King, then Governor of the Bank of England. Attendance at the 2022 Jubilee is likely to be even greater, and, besides, at the time of the Platinum celebration, the UK is still likely to be feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Perhaps you’re a UK business with concerns about managing staff absences? If losing an additional day’s work in 2022 is likely to take you into the red, this would be a great moment to talk to us. At LeavePlanner, we help our clients devise strategies for dealing with the absence of key employees.

Total economic shutdown? Child’s play!

Get in touch if you’d like our help and support to deal with 2022…or more imminent events.