I am looking for some guidance please.

We have a situation whereby one of our employees requires urgent dental work and cannot fund this.  The employee has suggested whether we could buy some of his holiday back in order for him to fund the treatment.  It sounds like it's very costly and around £2,000 plus.

His line manager has also approached me about this and wants to explore the buying holiday back option so I feel there is now pressure to make a decision fairly quickly as it seems to be affecting his work.

We offer employees above the statutory entitlement for holiday, 23 days plus bank holidays, but it sounds like the employee will need to surrender around 10 days to fund the treatment.

We do not have a policy in place but have in the past bought holiday back from a previous employee (under different circumstances) so we can do this.

Is there a minimum holiday allowance the employee should be taking?  I feel that if he surrenders 10 days holiday he will have hardly any left for the rest of the year.

Just interested to hear any views on this.