p*ssed off, taken too many holiday hours (despite being told that I wasn't) so have lost most of my saved money

[TheLadyOfTheGreenKirtle]

I have recently left a major frozen foods retailer due to ill health, on my last payslip it said that I had 15.7 holiday hours left to take before october. last year I lsft taking my holidays til the last minute because i was worried about taking hours I hadn't accrued. I was told not to worry, that the figure was my holiday entitlement. the manager is pressing everyone to take all their hours and book up now. today I was expecting my 15.7hh plus £350 in christmas club money. while we are waiting for benefits etc to get sorted we needed that money. i was only paid £130. ive rung up payroll who said i accrued 53 holiday hours but have taken 80 in the year. holiday entitlement is not carried over, in fact i had to be paid the last periods excess. holiday entitlement is worked out in 6m periods. last period i had 66hr entitlement, this period because my hours reduced i had 39hrs.

surely they should have taken any excess out of my week in hand? and i still dont understand the holiday hours thing. if my manager is telling me to take hours ive not yet earned is that right?

Yes. If you had stayed until October you'd have accrued (from what you said) 95.7 hours' leave and could have taken that much, so you had another 15.7 hours to take before October. But if you leave before then you haven't accrued as much. It's absolutely normal to take hours you haven't yet accrued (next year I'm taking all my leave at the very start of the year, because then I'm going on ML, and I'll actually accrue the leave while I'm on ML). If they didn't do that then no one would be able to take any leave for the first couple of months of the holiday year.

but shouldnt they have taken it out of my week in hand rather than my savings?

So between Oct and end April you had 66 hours, then between May and end of July you should have had approx 19.5 (3 months worth of 39) total 85. I think you need to ask payroll for a breakdown of how they have calculated your leave allowance (obvioulsy above is approx as made assumptions about when you changed role and finished). I doubt you are owed money in lieu, sorry , and you should have allowed up to 20 hours in hand for the period you won't now be working.

Presumably your manager was asking everyone to book their leave so that they can manage staffing rotas etc and not have too many wantign time off at once. He may even have been pulled up on a previously lax approach to it.

ah, its ok. now ive calmed down i understand, but i genuinley didnt think that i had taken too many hours. i was told that i had already accrued those hours.

It takes a while to work out most of these things. It's pretty normal, again, that all your add-ons and your deductions get worked out and come in your final after-you've-gone payment from HR/payroll.

Now, it is possible (depending on how the thing was legally constituted) that they aren't legally allowed to touch your christmas club money. But (a) I strongly suspect that they will (if they have any sense at all) have set it up so that they legally can and (b) even if they couldn't all you'd have got is £350 plus an invoice for the £220 you owed them.

You may have been allocated the hours but you only accrue them through working the whole year.