2 Annual leave queries

[Woolyone]

Our Holiday year runs January to January. My Maternity leave started on 24/12/09 and as such by the time I have to go back I will have accrued a full 28 days AL plus BH's. I wanted to add my leave on to the end of my maternity leave, however I suspect my employer will not allow me to carry over days into the next year. Usually we are only allowed to carry 3 days over and these have to be taken by the end if January? Can they stop me taking this leave and offer me payment instead?

The other query I have is on behalf of a friend who works in the same office and is also on maternity leave. She is due to go back in September and wants to take a couple of days a week AL until January such that she will be working "flexibly"/ PT without making a permanent change to her contract. Can our employer refuse her leave application? There is plenty of cover in the office and odd days as opposed to blocks of weeks have not been refused in the past.

On holiday, yes they can refuse the request. It would be subject to all the normal holiday guidelines and, whilst odd days might not have been refused in the past, I presume that wasn't for four months.

That said, depending on the role, some employers will see it as a nice way to ease someone back in.

On your holiday, it's a bit of a grey area. You can make women comply with normal holiday carry forward rules if they can reasonably take their holiday (say they were off Sept-Sept). In your case, if you take your full leave you can't, so I would probably expect them to allow you to carry forward. However, they could put conditions on it - such as requiring it all to be taken at the end of maternity leave, rather than stored up for the following year (when it could be quite disruptive to have someone who has twice as much holiday as the rest of the team.

HTH