More Holiday?

The Working Time Regulations 1998 as amended provide that all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday. That amounts to four weeks normal holiday and a further 8 days being equivalent to 1.6 weeks for a worker who works five days per week so as to make up the total. Someone working part time on say 3 days per week would therefore be entitled to 5.6 x 3 =16.8 days holiday. The fraction of a day is rounded up to a whole day giving 17 days holiday in total. If that worker works on a Monday Tuesday and Wednesday each week then in 2010 5 bank holidays were on a Monday and those will reduce the entitlement to 12 days.

According to Regulation 13 (9) holiday or leave as the Regulation prefers to call it, can only be taken in the year in respect of which it is due. In other words it cannot be carried over to the next year and if it is not taken it is lost. You might therefore think that if someone booked his holiday at the end of a leave year but because of illness was unable to take that holiday, it would be lost where he did not return to work until the following leave year. However it is now clear that such a conclusion would be incorrect and the worker would be entitled to carry his holiday over into the next year and take it together with his new holiday entitlement for that year. This is because the European Court in a case called Pereda v Madrid Movilidad decided that The Working Time Directive required every worker to have 4 weeks holiday and if he was ill during that period then he could convert that period in to sick leave and take his holiday again later and even in the next leave year. An English Tribunal has now decided that they will follow Pereda so that being ill on holiday is no longer bad luck.