Hi,

Hoping that someone can point me in the right direction with an annual leave query!

We are currently going through a period of high staff absence due to sickness, we have been able to cover a lot of this internally with staff who are normally part time and have agreed to work additional hours and have been paid through booking overtime. It has occurred to me that because of the ongoing nature of the sickness some staff have been working regular overtime since September and I queried with out payroll if theses additional hours are being taken into account in terms of annual leave.my query being that someone contracted to 12 hours has been working 36 but only paid for annual leave as a 12 hour week. This is quite a common theme in the school with timesheets processed every month for all sorts of reasons, not just on an ad hoc basis.

Payroll have advised they pay annual leave in August and it is at this point that they carry out the 12 week average hours calculation to establish any additional holiday pay required however if for whatever reason these employees who have been working additional hours for 6 months suddenly stop in the 12 weeks before August they would receive no additional holiday pay. In my mind our holiday pay is rolled up with our annual salary and therefore we can't specify what time of the year someone is actually taking their holiday, correct me if I'm wrong! 

I spoke to our legal advisors who confirmed my concerns and said a calculation should be done on a monthly basis to review any overtime and therefore any pro rata holiday entitlement should be paid, we could otherwise be making unlawful deductions from salary.

I've received a spreadsheet from payroll of all overtime worked for the past 2 years and have so far calculated 1000 hours owed in holiday pay. Our business manager is reluctant to pay as the funds are not in the budget and said only if someone raises it. Given this is a legal requirement I'm going to argue against this of course but before I do wanted to check if my understanding is correct??

Also if you were going to pay staff for missed annual leave pay how far back should you legally go? I'm worried about opening a can of worms and ensuring I know exactly what our requirements are before announcing to staff any additional payments.

Hope that all makes sense!!

Thanks in advance for any advice!