Holiday allowance and holiday pay

Ensuring you have the full holiday allowance and pay that you are entitled to

• Calculating your full entitlement to holiday allowance and pay can be complicated. It is therefore important to ensure that you are, and have been, receiving your full allowance.
• If you don’t take your full holiday allowance within the relevant holiday year it can be lost.
• If you think you may not be receiving the correct holiday entitlement or holiday pay, we can advise how best to resolve this situation and, if necessary, negotiate with your employer on your behalf.

Does your employer allow you to take the statutory minimum amount of holiday each year and when you take holiday are you being paid correctly?

What is a holiday allowance?

A holiday allowance is a specified amount of paid time off that an employee is entitled to take as leave during the course of a year. This may include both statutory annual leave and any additional holiday entitlement provided by the employer. Holiday allowances can vary depending on the terms of the employment contract and may be subject to certain restrictions or conditions.

Employees and workers are entitled to a minimum amount of paid holiday a year. For part-time employees and workers, their entitlement is subject to a pro-rata amount of holiday based on the number of hours they work.

Those employees and workers who don’t work regular hours (e.g. because they work shifts) have a slightly more complex formula to use when calculating their holiday entitlement. For example, shift workers may have their holiday allowance calculated using an average of the hours worked over a certain period.

Employers are able to give an employee or worker more days of holiday entitlement by stating a higher allowance in the employment contract. However, they are unable to decrease the holiday entitlement below the minimum amount set out in law.

The law states that you must take a certain amount of holiday per year (which may or may not be based on the calendar year, depending on your employer) or you will lose the right to take that holiday, unless you were unable to take it because you were sick, injured, pregnant or on maternity leave.

In circumstances such as these, you can carry your annual leave forward into the next holiday year. However, your employment contract or staff handbook may set out additional rules relating to ‘carry over’ of holiday; for example, limiting the number of days you can carry over with you (unless an exception applies) and confirming when you must take that leave by.

If you are worried that you are not being allowed to take the minimum amount of time off as holiday, please get in touch and we can assist you by liaising with your employer to rectify the situation.