Employer threatening to not pay staff for holidays not taken

[thundercunt]

Where I work is under review and there will likely be redundancies in the autumn.
Management are crap, and can't seem to ever get our work rota correct.

They have also introduced new rules so that only three staff can be off at once. The result of this is that there is now literally no free holiday time until the end of September.

A colleague asked what would happen if we didn't get chance to take our leave because of no available slots, and were then made redundant or chose to take voluntary redundancy. They were told we would lose it and wouldn't get paid for it. AIBU to think this is wrong? (These rules don't apply to the managers). I work in public sector if that is of any relevance.

Look up your redundancy policy and procedures and see what it says. I took voluntary redundancy from a local authority last year and had I not taken my pro rata leave entitlement, would not have been paid for any days not taken. I think it was different for compulsory redundancy. Might be worth challenging the 3 person rule with HR as if you think this is unfair.

I'm going to have a word with my union, as part of the reason why people may lose holidays is because they aren't being allowed to take them. It's causing an awful lot of stress as some people are looking at not being able to take any time off for months.

They either have to let you take your holiday time or they have to pay you for it. Failing to do so is a breach of employment law.

YANU to think it's wrong, IMO, because I think it's not on at all! However, on a legal standing I don't know if this can be done.
I spent some time as a manager ,(under general management team) and we had rules such as no more than 3 off, if you chose not to take the holidays because there were none available when you wanted them, then you lost them. And we had a no carry forward rule, However a couple of people lost out because all available slots were taken before the cut off point, they were then paid for those hols because they effectively had holiday requests denied, for all dates up to the cut off point. This wwas the type of company that would only give what they absolutely had to, so I'm inclined to think that they had to do this, but I might be wrong, or it might be different in a redundancy situation.
ACAS should be able to clarify it for you, I've used them a lot in the past and they've been quite helpful.