iCalendar for English Bank Holidays
by Rowan - August 10th, 2009.Tags: bank holiday, calendar, ical, icalendar, ruby.
I've been making increasing use of Lightning (backed onto Google Calendar) recently, for both work and personal use, and being able to see bank holidays in my calendar would be very handy. But for some reason, all I can ever find is calendars for "UK Holidays", which are pretty useless - for one thing, not all parts of the UK have the same bank holidays, and for another, they tend to include random events like Saints' Days which aren't "holidays" in the sense of a day off work!
So I decided to make my own calendar, showing bank holidays, in England, and nothing else. And, just for the sake of it (and because there was a very nice-looking library available), I wrote my first ever Ruby script to generate the iCal file for it! A seasoned Ruby coder will probably look at it and laugh, but hey, it works!
The dates are based on this government website, which currently has data up to 2011. The resulting files should work fine in Lightning, and as imports to Google Calendar, so feel free to "subscribe".
- Bank Holidays in England and Wales
- Bank Holidays in Northern Ireland
- Statutory Bank Holidays in Scotland (note that Scottish holiday arrangements appear to be more complicated)
August 10th, 2009 at 15:12
"...for both home and personal use..." Married to your work are we?
August 11th, 2009 at 14:21
Ooh, erm, *ahem*... You must have imagined it! ;)
September 30th, 2009 at 11:42
Great - been looking for a bank holiday only calendar. Is this likely to go offline in the future?
Cheers
September 30th, 2009 at 11:50
Well, I obviously can't guarantee it 100%, but I certainly intend to keep URLs on this domain permanent, so these should remain available (and updated as necessary) "for the foreseeable future".
Glad to be of service! :)
March 21st, 2010 at 18:45
Ta! (And what a shame that the Government Web site isn't clued up enough to do this.)
July 31st, 2010 at 11:34
Thank you! :-)
August 2nd, 2010 at 09:41
Excellent. Thanks. Was thrown a few times when I told people we could not hold a meeting because of the Bank Holiday (in Scotland) and I live in England. Doh!
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:04
So New Year's Day 2011 is on the 3rd January. I think it would be better if you changed these 'substitute days' to be called 'Bank Holiday'. I'm such a halfwit I'll probably arrange my christmas dinner for the wrong day otherwise.
August 2nd, 2010 at 13:34
@Neal: Yeah, arranging meetings is hard enough without misleading calendars! Glad to be of service. :)
@steve: Haha! I hadn't thought of that, I just copied them straight from the government lists. This would have been particularly confusing for the Scottish calendar, on which the 4th January was labelled "2nd January"!
I've gone through and added the word "Holiday" at the end of all the affected dates. (If anyone can think of a better label for the second Scottish New Year's holiday than "2nd January Bank Holiday", let me know...)
August 22nd, 2010 at 15:10
Thanks! Very handy. I keep on having my hopes raised by impending bank holidays on my calendar, only to find out they're Scottish-only!
November 8th, 2010 at 17:22
Brilliant, I've been looking all over for this. Thanks.
November 28th, 2010 at 08:34
Well, finding your calendar files has saved me a few hours typing and Alt-Tabing between the net and the calendar prog! Thanks Rowan, I owe you a virtual pint!
December 17th, 2010 at 00:21
DELIGHTED to find your calendar - was amazed at how difficult it is to find an England-only ical. Many thanks!
A poss suggestion for naming 'offset' hoiidays - I call mine 'in lieu of...', eg 'in lieu of Christmas Day
January 4th, 2011 at 00:30
Fantastic, thanks! I don't really care if it's a bank holiday in Scotland!!
January 12th, 2011 at 13:53
Great idea, such a simple and obvious expectation, why nobody had produced one before I dont know.
Curious as to whether it is possible to produce one that has an infinite projection of future bank hols, would probably crash my android phone though if it existed.
February 10th, 2011 at 17:43
Cheers mate, just what I was looking for.
February 23rd, 2011 at 10:48
Perfect, just what I was after and stopped me having to make one myself! Thank you!
March 5th, 2011 at 13:24
Thanks, that's great the apple one was out of date and missing the extra days off we have this year and next. Cheers!
May 7th, 2011 at 22:38
Thanks very much - exactly what i was after!
June 28th, 2011 at 14:12
Thank you!
July 27th, 2011 at 11:20
This is exactly what I wish Google would publish, thanks!
July 27th, 2011 at 13:24
I just want to add my thanks to the list. My wife just called to say this coming Monday was a bank holiday and we started making plans before realising it was Scotland only. Have subscribed her and myself to your version, so we won't get false hopes again. Thanks!
September 1st, 2011 at 18:28
Excellent - thanks very much! Works a treat!
September 28th, 2011 at 13:31
Thank you for doing this.
September 28th, 2011 at 13:31
Thank you for doing this.