NEWS & EVENTS

The ruling said that in a particular case, an employee was entitled to carry over holiday he would have had while he was ill off work.

The case concerned a man who broke his ankle and was off work for three months.  He had previously booked one of those months off as annual leave and asked for them to be carried over to the next holiday year.  When his employer refused he went to the employment tribunal. The tribunal agreed that he should be able to carry the holiday over in to the next year, despite this seeming to go against the UK Working Time regulations, which say only up to eight days can be carried over.

Local employment specialist Phil Cookson, of Roythorne Christmas solicitors said:

Whilst the decision in this case is not binding on all tribunals, and does not change the law, it shows that judges are perhaps coming round to the fact that holidays should be able to be carried over if an employee is off ill when holiday was booked. 

Some employers may want to start to look at their holiday policies and think about building this in to them, whilst others may want to wait until the law is clarified or the Government amends the Working Time Regulations.