Holiday entitlement during leave
[ch 9: pages 335-336]Employees on maternity, adoption, ordinary or shared parental leave accrue holiday, both statutory and contractual, while on leave. However, they are not allowed to take holiday while on these kinds of leave, so they often build up large amounts of holiday to take at the end. This can be a good way of extending the time spent at home, once the statutory right to pay has run out. (The final 13 weeks of statutory leave are unpaid.)
An employee who is unable, because of the timing of their holiday year, to take their full statutory annual leave before going on maternity leave must be allowed to carry it over to take after the maternity leave has ended, even if the contract of employment says an employee will forfeit any holiday unused at the end of the holiday year. Making the woman forfeit the leave she could not take while on maternity leave would be maternity discrimination (Gomez v Continental Industries del Caucho [2004] IRLR 407).
Providing less favourable holiday “carry forward” rights to same-sex couples taking adoption leave than to women on maternity leave would amount to direct sexual orientation discrimination.
An employee who returns to work part-time having worked full-time before going on maternity, adoption or shared parental leave will accrue holiday during that leave based on their full-time hours.