Annual leave suspension. NHS.

[afriendcalledfive]

Hi there, can the NHS suspend annual leave? What reasons can they use to do this, if so? There are redundancies coming up this year due to our trust going paperless, and though there will be redeployment I suspect, there is talk of suspending A/L from October. Please advise, MTIA

What do you/they mean by "suspending" annual leave exactly?

Mainly that any annual leave requested for after October will not be honoured until all redundancies/redeployment has been sorted, I think, due to how many staff will be left in the dept. That's how I understand it anyway, flowery, but might be wrong.

They will try. HR is staffed by robots who think we are robots who don't leave annual leave. I'm in primary care now but the horror stories from the hospitals is horrendous. Even to people being on call the night of their wedding or before it.

Musical - Christ, you're scaring me now...but seriously, can they do this?

They can't take contractual holiday away from you, but they don't have to let you take it when you want to take it, and you have to physically take at least 4 weeks off in a year. So it's fine (well not, but you know what I mean) to say no holiday to be taken after October as long as everyone gets to physically take their holiday at some point.

Thanks flowery, that is very useful (for want of a better word) to know.

Afriend. This tends to happen to the doctors I know. In the junior roles they are changing job every 6 months and although people ask months in advance they can just ignore what you ask for. I have read a few stories about this on a medical forum I subscribe to.