- IN PERSON FOR THE v - Mr J Smith — 2021

The claimant, Mr D Martin, brought a claim for unpaid holiday pay against Travelsmith Holidays Ltd. He said he had taken no holiday in the 2020 leave year and was owed his full pro rata entitlement. The respondent said he had already taken all of his holiday for that year and nothing remained due. The claimant had been employed until his dismissal by reason of redundancy on 10 November 2020. The tribunal noted that the holiday year ran with the calendar year and that the claimant was contractually entitled to 31 days' paid leave each year, together with one month of unpaid leave.

The only real issue was whether the leave taken by the claimant in early 2020 was his 2020 leave, as the respondent argued, or carry-forward leave from 2019, as the claimant said. The claimant's evidence was that he had followed a long-standing practice of taking all holiday in a block at the start of each year and carrying unused leave forward. The respondent's evidence was that no staff were allowed to carry over unused holiday, that hourly paid workers were paid for untaken holiday at year end, and that the claimant was using the current year's entitlement rather than brought-forward leave.

The tribunal accepted that the case was difficult because there was no documentary evidence resolving the dispute beyond the staff handbook and emails. It noted that the parties had an unusual arrangement under which the claimant could take holiday in one block and combine it with a month of unpaid leave, but it found that the claimant's account of an additional carry-forward arrangement was not sufficiently coherent. In particular, the claimant accepted that he had been paid for unpaid leave in 2009, which did not fit comfortably with his account that he had carried leave forward from 2009 into 2010.

The tribunal was not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the claimant had any outstanding unused holiday for the 2020 leave year. It therefore dismissed the unpaid holiday pay claim.