Annual Leave Cancelled

[EdithGrantham]

My DH requested to start paternity leave from 13th August, he requested this later than he should have done but with around 8 weeks notice, this was never confirmed by his employer but his line manager said "It should be fine"

He started a block of two weeks of annual leave from 27th July so should have had a month off total. The baby was born on 24th July and since then he has been checking his shifts app to find out if the paternity has been approved.

Today, one week into his AL, he's been told they've changed it on the system to paternity leave and they will give him the AL back "when they can"

What are his rights around this?

I guess it depends on if his company is happy for him to tag holiday and paternity leave on to each other, the way they have responded it sounds not, so they’ve honoured his paternity leave, despite his late request, and cancelled the holiday.
What does his contract/employee handbook say?
Could he not just contact them now and ask them to take the holiday days straight after his paternity leave instead?
From what I’ve read it’s all ‘you could extend the leave by adding holiday’ but there is nothing saying an employee has to agree to it, as far as I can see.

Congratulations on your new baby.

www.acas.org.uk/paternity-rights-leave-and-pay/taking-paternity-leave#:~:text=An%20employee%20must%20take%20their,paternity%20leave%2C%20for%20example%20holiday.

What was baby’s due date? If it was mid Aug maybe they assumed he wanted it straight after baby was born and adjusted it accordingly. Maybe they have realised that having someone off for a month at this time of year cause’s staffing problems as that’s when many people want holiday. Either way they should have explained before changing it.

https://www.gov.uk/paternity-pay-leave/leave

He's given the required amount of notice and they can't cancel his leave while he's on it. He should confirm that he will be taking two weeks annual leave and 2 weeks paternity, as agreed.

I think they can cancel the holiday as long as they give notice that is more than twice the length of the holiday. To cancel two weeks leave, they would need to give four weeks notice, for example. If that hasn’t happened, I’d contact his union rep (if he has one and is in a union).

Thanks all, with my eldest they were happy for him to take paternity leave followed directly by annual leave, he has to request annual leave nearly a year in advance so that was requested and approved before I even knew I was pregnant.

Baby was due in the period of his annual leave so when he initially told them he told them my due date plus the date he'd like his paternity leave to start.

He's emailed all the relevant people and copied in his union rep so hopefully he'll get some sort of resolution. He would have been ok with having to take his paternity at a different time but they haven't ever confirmed or refused his request so he has been in limbo over what to do. He would be more reluctant to take his AL at a different time because we think there's less onus on his company to approve it at a time that he requests, they could just assign it when it suits them but that may be us misunderstanding how things work.