Haven’t worked in months but still accruing holiday?

NHS vs Larner case, handed down  at the Court of Appeal, ruled that workers who cannot take holiday due to illness are entitled to accrue holiday for when they return.

This approach – in crediting accrued Annual Leave to employees that come back after long term sick – has been signposted as a directive from the European courts for some time. This principle is now trickling down to UK court decisions.

It is clear that if an employee is off for the whole of the holiday year then they can request their full years entitlement to be carried over to the subsequent holiday year once they return (but note this only applies to the statutory holiday days allowance, not any extra Annual Leave days that are part of the Company’s policy).

This decision in the NHS v Larner case also implies that if an employee is off towards the end of the holiday year, for example if they were off for the last 3 months of the year, then they could carry forward a quarter of that years allowance and add it to the next year. And in addition, should the employee leave following a long bout of absence, they could ask for payment for the statutory leave they were not able to take while sick.

Employees being off for over a year should be a rare thing, and it certainly is in the companies that we partner with here at Honeydew. The solution to this absence management – use Honeydew to help you track sickness and proactively manage absentees so that this does not become an issue for your company.