Annual leave is a simple area of employment law for employers and HR staff to manage.  However, there are a few key elements they need to be aware of.

In employment law, the statutory annual leave entitlement for a full time employee is 5.6 week’s, or in other words 28 days.

Employees will request time off when they wish, but employers are within their rights to refuse a request. However, care should be taken when refusing a holiday request.  Employers should be able to objectively justify any refusal in order to ensure they avoid a possible discrimination claim from an employee with a protected characteristic, for example someone wishing to celebrate their religious festival.

Employers are also allowed to require employees to take leave on a particular day by giving them notice, for example if the employer operates an annual shutdown period. Ideally this should be written into contracts of employment, and the employer should give reasonable notice of any such leave.

It is important to note that an employee’s statutory annual leave entitlement may not be replaced with payment in lieu of holiday, except where their employment is terminated.

Employers should encourage their employees to take time off, but employees are not entitled to holiday pay if they forego their holiday entitlement by choice as this would create a financial incentive for them not to exercise their holiday rights.

Finally, what about carrying over untaken leave from one year to the next? There are many rules in this area, for example you should allow leave to be carried over where the business has refused the employee the opportunity to take it when requested and there are also legal requirements such as carrying over leave due to maternity leave.

If you would like to discuss this HR article in more detail, please contact our HR consultants at info@connectivebusiness.co.uk