NEWS & EVENTS

City based employment experts have warned that employers may need to change their policies to allow annual leave to be carried forward to the next year or risk a tribunal.

The warning follows two decisions by the European Court of Justice which ruled that in some cases holiday entitlement should be allowed to be taken in the next annual leave year, despite the UK Working Time Regulations (WTR) specifying it is unlawful to carry over more than eight days per year.

Last week the ECJ ruled that workers who fall sick while on holiday should be allowed to reschedule their leave, even it if meant within the next leave year.  This is on the back of their decision earlier this year which said that  workers can accrue holiday pay while on sick leave, and that holiday should be allowed to be carried forward.

The Working Time Regulations state that that no more than eight days can be carried forward into the next leave year, leaving a grey area in the law until UK case law clarifies the situation.

Phil Cookson, employment specialist at city based lawyers Roythorne Christmas said:

Potentially this could introduce an extra cost and administrative burden on UK employers as they have to change policies and procedures to take account of the new rules.  Sickness absence already costs UK business over £13 billion a year and by allowing leave to be carried over could cause numerous complications.

But Phil advised the regions employers not to take any actions yet, as the UK Government has yet to decide how it will react to the ruling. 

Our advice at the moment is to sit tight and wait until the Government decides how to respond to the ECJ ruling before they start to amend policies.