Mr J Bugaila v Muirfield Recruitment Limited — 2020

The claimant worked for the respondent from April 2017 until he resigned on 14 October 2020. The parties agreed that the respondent’s holiday year was the calendar year, that the claimant was entitled to 28 days per year, and that he accrued 22 days of annual leave in 2020. The issue was whether he had used holiday in January and July 2020 and, if so, how many days remained unpaid at the end of his employment.

The tribunal found that the claimant was on leave from 1 to 3 January 2020 and preferred the respondent’s evidence that those days came from his 2020 allocation, because the respondent did not allow carry-over from one year to the next. It preferred the claimant’s evidence that he worked as normal from 6 to 10 January 2020 and was not on annual leave for that week. Although the respondent said it had required employees to take leave in the last two weeks of July 2020, the tribunal found the claimant had not been given the notice required by regulation 15(3) and (4) of the Working Time Regulations 1998, so those July dates did not count as annual leave.

By the end of the employment, the claimant had received payment for 5 accrued days on his final payslip dated 16 October 2020. On the tribunal’s findings, that left 14 days of accrued leave unpaid. Using the claimant’s average earnings, the tribunal calculated 14 days at £791.11 gross, then applied tax at 19% and National Insurance at 12% to reach £545.87 net. The tribunal ordered the respondent to pay that sum as compensation.