Calculating Holiday Entitlement for Term-Time Workers: Supreme Court Judgement
Published on: 05/09/2022
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Paul Upson Director
Paul Upson Director
Paul upson

Paul’s main area of practice is employment law.


Paul studied law at Queen’s University and before joining Napier Solicitors he gained over 15 years post qualification experience as an employment solicitor at a major national law firm.  He has worked with clients in a wide variety of employment sectors, including schools, further education colleges and universities.


Paul has specialist knowledge of all areas of employment law, including all forms of unlawful discrimination; unfair dismissal; TUPE issues; protected disclosures (whistleblowing); and cases involving part-time workers and fixed-term employees. He routinely runs complex high value Industrial Tribunal cases and has dealt with Tribunal appeals to the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal.


Paul also provides training to clients in relation to employment law and equality issues. He is a committee member of the Employment Lawyers Group for Northern Ireland. 
A Legal 500 source recently said: “Paul Upson is now established as one of the leading employment and discrimination lawyers in the jurisdiction. His grasp of cases and complexities arising is second to none”.

Background  ⚓︎

Mrs Brazel was a music teacher who worked at a school run by the Harpur Trust. She was employed under a permanent contract but did not have fixed hours and only worked during term time. 

Each year Mrs Brazel received three payments for holiday pay at the end of each term. On each occasion the employer calculated her working hours for the preceding term; and paid her holiday pay for 12.07% of those hours.   

The 12.07% figure was calculated by dividingthe statutory annual leave entitlement of 5.6 weeks by 46.4 weeks. The 46.4 weeks representedthe 52 weeks in a leave year, minus the 5.6 weeks statutory

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 05/09/2022