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Obscure holiday rules clarified

Employers who refuse holiday entitlement to an employee who has breached his or her employment contract will not be in breach of the Working Time Directive, the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) has announced.

The EAT’s judgement provides clarification for employers on holiday entitlement and long-standing conflicting cases about whether workers are entitled to holiday pay even when they haven't complied with an employer's rules for taking holidays.

This decision was welcomed by leading employment lawyer, Owen Warnock, who said it brought ‘clarity to the issue and confirms that a worker must give the notice required by his contract in order to benefit from the rights under the Regulations’.

The claimant requested to take annual leave which did not comply with notice requirements set out in his employment contract.

Shortly before the holiday year end, the claimant asked to take his outstanding holiday entitlement, although he did not comply with the four-week notice requirement.

When the holiday request was refused the employee argued that the notice requirements set out in the contract effectively prevented him taking his full entitlement before the year end.

Owen Warnock, partner at international law firm Eversheds told Payroll World: ‘You would think this kind of thing would not be a worry, but it comes as a great relief to employers. It reassures them that they are entitled to insist on the employee complying with the rules set out in the employment contract.

‘If an employer refuses the holiday leave request on this basis the rules are now clear: saying “no” does not amount to breaking the Working Time Regulations,’ he added.

The EAT did caution employers to ensure that their rules were not applied in such a way as to effectively defeat a worker's entitlement to annual leave in any given year.

If an employee is forced into applying for holiday late in the year because of sickness, European law may well require the employer to permit him or her to take the leave if forced to take the holiday late in the year.

02/02/10