Can we insist employees take unused annual leave or should they be allowed to carry it forward due to COVID-19?
Published on: 01/12/2020
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Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Johanna Cunningham Senior Associate, Lewis Silkin (NI) LLP
Johanna Cunningham Senior Associate, Lewis Silkin (NI) LLP
Johanna cunningham

Since qualifying in 2018, Johanna has supported clients with disciplinary and grievance issues, defending employment tribunal claims, senior exits, redundancies, TUPE, and day-to-day HR queries. She also has a strong interest in the overlap between employment law and data protection, regularly advising on subject access requests, data breaches, employee monitoring, and matters involving cross-border workers.

Can we insist employees take unused annual leave or should they be allowed to carry it forward due to COVID-19?

Regulation 18 of the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 enables employers to require employees to take annual leave on particular days provided that they give employees twice as much notice as the leave they are being required to take. Therefore, employers can ask employees to use untaken leave in the current leave year.

Annual leave entitlement is derived from three main sources:

  1. 20 days under reg. 15 of the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (“WTR 2016”) (basic entitlement);

  2. 8 days under reg. 16 of the WTR 2016 (additional entitlement); and

  3. Optional additional days as specified in

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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 01/12/2020