How much notice must employer give to change the holiday year ?

[MinnieMountain]

Our holiday year runs 1st January to 31st December. We had an email today saying that to fit in with the company’s financial year, it is going to change to start on 1st July.

We have been told that we MUST take half our a/l for the “current” holiday year by 30 June 2024 or the leave will be lost.

Can my employer do this? I’ve got more leave booked for after 30 June due to booked trips, so I would loose holiday.

I don't know, but when this happened to me, they ran an 18 month period, so you had say Jan 24 to June 25 to take 1.5 years worth of leave.

Do you have a union? I'd be surprised if this was allowable and pp said, this should accommodate some sway across the year this year and start proper in 2025, so e.g you get 20 days holiday a year, this year you get 30 days, until 30 June 2025, then it's 20 days onwards

It's not uncommon to have to use holiday as you go.we have to use 1/3 of allowance every 4 months and must book 1 week in jan-March period.

See that would make sense @BendingSpoons .

No union to speak of.

@theymustnowknow we have to keep some leave for Check closure but that’s standard in our industry. I don’t think this is the same thing.

*Christmas closure.

Our holiday year runs from the month of our birthday - they started this to stop the bottleneck of everyone using their outstanding annual leave at the same time.

It was changed years ago and I can't remember the details but I'm pretty sure we had a year of flex where you could take a certain amount from either holiday year, depending where your birthday fell when it was implemented.

I think technically an employer can dictate when you take all your leave if they choose to. So I don't think there is likely to be a legal issue with this, but it's frustrating. It is also likely that a lot of people have lots of leave to take, as likely many haven't taken much since Jan. Will this be easy to take, or will they start saying too many people are off? As then presumably you would have grounds to complain.

I do agree that whatever the legal position is, it is short notice and annoying, as you didn't have this information when booking holidays. On the other hand, you could argue you still have a full year from July to take your holidays, so it might not be that bad. I presume they have already said no to flexibility?

I am not clear on what your employer is intending to do here. Are they saying that the Jan-Dec 2024 leave year now ends in July, and a new 12 month July 2025 - June 2025 year will then be in effect from this coming July?

Are they allowing you to then carry over your remaining Jan-July accrued leave into the new July-Jun holiday year but on condition that a minimum of 2.8 weeks leave is used for the Jan to July period? So you could effectively “carry over” one months accrued leave, but no more?

If so then (whilst I haven’t come across this specific issue in practice) from a working time regulations point of view, they can require you to take your leave, and as they have arguably given you reasonable notice to take a maximum of 2.8 (statutory) weeks’ leave in a 3.5 month period, then they probably are permitted to either a) require you to take it on specific dates with notice or b) to tell you that you have lost the leave if you make no attempt to take it.

However, if the leave year is contractual (which it almost certainly will be) then they technically need your consent to change this term of your contract (or they will have to enforce the change on you). Whether you have any remedy to an enforced change will depend on whether it has a serious detrimental impact, whether there are financial implications etc. but I think it’s unlikely to be a fundamental breach if they allow you to take your pro rata allowance over both years, and there’s no loss of pay either, so probably very little that can be done. You could object to it of course and see what happens.

Edited to add - also if you’re taking holiday from the Jul24-Jun25 allowance, you wouldn’t be losing holiday - you’d just be taking it from a different year!

@MrsPinkCock your first paragraph is correct.

They are saying no carrying over of leave if you have any left at 1 July.

I’m out, so can’t check my contract but I’m sure it’s stated.

This seems most unreasonable.
I'd just say you've got this leave booked and you had planned to use this year's leave so can you have an exceptional carryover. If they won't let you then tell them you'll be taking all your leave in June so hope they've got someone to cover it !!

Does the annual leave you've got booked after June not come out of the new leave year though?

So you take what they say for jan to June whatever the pro rata figure is.

Then you get a new full years allowance to take from July to June.

@MinnieMountain This is where I would expect a Trade Union or Staff Association etc. to step in., particularly if it is contractual. As pp have said good practice would be to make it an 18 month leave year.

The first thing to do is check if it is contractual. If it is try and work with your colleagues to point this out and propose they use the 18 months option.

Once you have exhausted the contractual route I would write to HR and copy in your manager. Explain you have booked holiday for later in the year and this requirement would cause you hardship. Set out exactly how you had planned your leave for this year and ask to carry over x days.

You will need to be reasonable. For example if you just have the statutory minimum of 28 days including BH, your entitlement to 30 June is 14 days less 5 BH (NYD, GF, EM, MD, SBH) = 9 days. Asking to carry over 5 days and using up 4 is reasonable when you will get 28 days from 1 July.

I am not clear why you think you would lose holiday. The leave you have booked for after 30th June will come out of your 2024/25 holiday allowance, which will be a full year's allowance.

The only difference between what they are doing and making it an 18 month leave year, as some are suggesting, is that you wouldn't be forced to take 6 months leave by the end of June. You will still get the same amount of holiday in total. And your employer can still stipulate when you take it.

However, if your annual leave year is contractual (most are), they cannot make this change without your consent.

@prh47bridge the letter says we will lose any leave for the 6 month holiday “year” they have created which ends on 30 June 2024 if we do not use it.
I am entitled to 8 days in that period but I’ve got 6 booked, so I would loose 2.

So book in 2 additional days somewhere. Then it’s not lost.

Two days doesn't seem a huge problem. If someone had a week and it was too late to book to go away anywhere then that would be difficult.

Why can't you just book to take the other 2 days before June?

As others have said, you have 3 months to take two more days holiday, then you won't lose anything.

The law is that an employer can dictate every holiday day you take. They have to give you notice which is double the length of the holiday they want you to take. So if they want you to take a specific week then they can do this. They have to give you two weeks notice.

So they are fine to change their holiday year from July by giving notice now. If that meant that you had to take three weeks of holiday before July they would have to give you six weeks notice of this.

There is absolutely no legal right to take holiday when you want to take it.

I’m an employment solicitor. This is set out in the working time legislation (and might be supplemented by wording in contracts/handbooks etc)

Fair enough everyone.

Twice in the past I have had to push back against my employer to get them to apply employment law correctly (to do with allocation/use of BH allowance for me as a PT worker), so my first reaction is to not trust them unfortunately.

I think forcing you to take holiday before mid year is allowed the bit I’m not sure is allowed is that you will then just lose the holiday if say you take more in the second half of the year. That seems harsh.

You have 3 months to book 2 days leave! You made it sound like you were going to lose 2 weeks or something!

It's 2 days, just book it in

You will then get a full years allocation from July

I really don't see the issue