In a disturbing development for employers last year the House of Lords ruled in HMRC v Stringer that employees could claim accrued but untaken annual leave going back a number of years.
Employers have obviously been looking to mitigate that scenario and as reported in Personnel Today there may now be a way to achieve this. Reported in In the Employment Tribunal Kahn v Martin McColl it was ruled that payment for a sick employee's final holiday year entitlement meant an unauthorised deductions claim for previous leave years' holiday pay was out of time.
This is because the series of deductions would be broken by the payment of the annual leave accrued for that year, which may mean that the last deduction in the series was outside the three month statutory time limit.
The ET decision is not binding on other Tribunals or Courts, but will be persuasive and the judgement offers employers a creative way to avoid significant liability in holiday pay claims.
