Another holiday entitlement question.

[Bluebird99]

I understand how to calculate how much an employee is entitled to, but I am unsure as to whether an employee has to earn their entitlement before they take time off.

Eg: Our holiday period runs from Apr 1st - May 31st, during which an employee is entitled to 5.6 weeks, depending on their hours worked.

If I take on a part time employee who works 20 hours per week, she would be entitled to 112 hours PA. Say this employee wanted to take a weeks leave, could I refuse them leave before they accrued enough time? (112/52 =2.15 hrs per week), so they would have to work approx 10 weeks by which time they would have accrued 21.5 weeks of holiday entitlement.

The reason I ask is I have recently taken on a young employee who has already taken over half of her annual entitlement since Apr 1st. Who is to say she won't hand in her notice next week? If she did she would have been overpaid, money which I would never get back.

Apologies for the long winded post, just trying to explain myself.

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

I am not an expert but as I understood it... You can either i) refuse holidays until it is accrued, or ii) you can within your contract/terms define that unaccrued holidays taken can be reclaimed from a final pay packet. You can't really roll holiday pay into hourly pay any more (saying holidays are pre-paid/un-paid) due to working time directive.

 

[Bluebird99]

Thanks, that would seem reasonable to me although I would prefer the first option. Obviously I would need to alter my contracts of employment and give all members of staff plenty of notice before I enforced this so they could keep some of this years entitlement if they wish to take time off at the start of next year.

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

Again I'm not an expert, but as I understand the working time directive you're also supposed to force an employee to take 4 weeks holiday a year and can optionally allow them to carry over the 1.6 weeks (or the part time equiv of each). You're not supposed to allow them to carry over more than this. If it's not defined in contract, then it is lost, but ofc you need to be fair and try show your staff the same flexibility as they show you.

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

Hi Bluebird,


For new starters, in their first year of employment leave is deemed to accrue at 1/12th of the annual entitlement for each month - applying from the first day of every month. For entitlement to part-days, these should be rounded-up to the nearest half. All provided for in Regulation 15A of the Working Time Regulations. This only applies for the first year of employment though, after that, workers could apply for all 28 days at the start of their leave year - although this doesn't have to be agreed; they can't be required to accrue leave before this is taken though.

A good employment contract would have clauses allowing you to recover excessive leave taken, if any worker was to leave having taken more leave than entitled - new or established workers.


Karl Limpert

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

In theory then, in the first year, if you didn't allow holidays to be used before accrued, or to roll over, the staff member would be forced to either use or lose the holiday between the first and last day of the twelfth month? interesting.

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

In theory then, in the first year, if you didn't allow holidays to be used before accrued, or to roll over, the staff member would be forced to either use or lose the holiday between the first and last day of the twelfth month? interesting.

Not quite Pipe Ten-Carl: they would accrue leave every month, proportionate to the total leave entitlement of 28* days - 2.something days every month, so each month they worked they would be entitled to more leave, and as long as they requested this, they wouldn't lose it.


*The link I included above only refers to Regulation 13 - 20 days a year. Regulation 15A (amended since introduced) does now make specific reference to 13A too, so a 12th of the 28 days is deemed to have accrued as at the 1st of every month.


The important things are though that it's only leave for which there is an entitlement that can be applied for, and this cannot be lost if a specific request to take it is declined - it has to be arranged for a future date. Employers can always refuse leave requests, or require leave to be taken at specific times (an employer could require that all leave is taken in the last month of the leave year if it cared). And with a sensible contract, pay for excessive leave can always be recovered by deduction from the wages.


Karl Limpert

 

[TianaRodriquez]

I think employee will loose the days