As we are currently in the height of summer, holidays are on everyone's minds
. Increasingly, employers need to take particular care surrounding the sometimes difficult of employee's entitlement to holidays during illness.
An employer has an obligation to an employee with long term sickness and an employee whose annual leave falls when they are currently off work with illness.
In a recent case this issue was raised and clarified. The result is that under the Working Time Directive an employee on sick leave will carry on accruing annual leave allowance, despite not being in work. There were some key points raised.
Statutory holiday accrues a worker on long-term sick leave will not lose any of their statutory entitlement to annual leave and will be entitled to benefit from the full 5.6 weeks of statutory annual leave.
Workers that are currently on long term sick leave will not lose any statutory entitlement to annual leave and they will be entitled to benefit from the full allowance of annual leave.
This case highlights the fact that employers may eventually be required to pay workers for any leave entitlement the worker has accrued that has not yet been taken from the beginning of the workers absence. Employees can perhaps convey their claim as a deduction from wages claim under the Employment Rights Act.
Payments in lieu of untaken holiday Under the Working Time Regulations entitlement to holiday pay in respect of untaken holiday only falls due when the employment is terminated. The regulations also say that holiday entitlement cannot be carried over to the next leave year. Taken together this would imply that employers will only be liable to pay for untaken leave in the holiday year in which termination of employment takes effect.
With the situation remaining unclear at present, this is an issue which is a certainty to be revisited by the courts in the near future.