Worker status & pay
What is holiday pay?
Holiday pay is paid annual leave, which workers accrue including agency temporaries. How it accrues and how it is paid have both been the subject of significant legal change.
Accrual for irregular-hours and part-year workers has changed, and arrangements that were correct under previous law may not be now. It is an area to check the current position on rather than to carry forward.
Rolled-up holiday pay — paying an uplift with each payment rather than paying leave when taken — was unlawful for a long period and its position has since changed for some categories of worker.
Whatever the arrangement, it has to be transparent. A worker who cannot tell from their payslip what they have accrued and what they have been paid is the situation most disputes start from.
What goes wrong in practice
- Arrangements unchanged after the law moved.
- Rolled-up pay applied to categories it does not cover.
- Accrual not visible to the worker anywhere.