Booking Annual Leave.

[thatone1967]

Are companies legally allowed to tell you when you can and cannot take holiday?
The company I work for have decided this year that only person per week can be on annual leave.
I have just tried to book a week off but told I cannot do so as someone else has already booked it.
I understand form a colleague who is as pissed off as me that there are laws that companies must abide to..

[Firefoot]

In a word... yes.

A company can decide when you take your annual leave. Most will usually be willing to discuss ways of accommodating your request, but there are times when they have to say no due to rules or the needs of the business.

[Engineer1]

Yes they can, a company can decide it needs a certain mix of staff in and if there are only 2 people who can do that job and it needs covering all the time then both can't be on holiday at the same time.

[Turbodiesel1690]

If they are going to get militant about it, play them at their own game and take a week off on the sick - you're legally entitled to be sick unless the coalition govt have changed that too

[TonyHetherington]

Turbodiesel1690 said:

you're legally entitled to be sick

You are quite correct.

Phoning in a sickie on the exact same week that you previously asked for as holiday, however, you can probably guarantee the company will easily prove that you were none of those things.

[Silver993tt]

Turbodiesel1690 said:

If they are going to get militant about it, play them at their own game and take a week off on the sick - you're legally entitled to be sick unless the coalition govt have changed that too

Why would you do that? There's currently high unemployement in the UK and it's set to rise this year, playing any games would be highly unadvisable.

The rules regarding annual leave and who decides when it can be taken are in any employment contract. If you don't like those terms & conditions then leave or become self-employed where any time off isn't paid at all - even sick leave. Most employers will try and accomodate as mentioned above but at the end of the day they have a business to run and if any of their employees can't be bothered to read their contract of employment then it's really tough luck.

[TonyGiles]

As others have said, yes they can do this.

It's worth checking if there's a holiday policy and what the terms in this are but you're basically stuffed.

Although you could pull a sickie I know of people who have been fired for gross misconduct over this so I couldn't recommend it.

[fergywales]

Yes, a company, on providing adequate reasoning, can restrict or dictate when holiday allowance can be taken.

No, they cannot tell you that you must take certain periods if they do not apply the same policy to all members of staff at a certain level, with the same role or holding the same responsibilities.

If your employer has a holiday booking policy (I used to operate a policy of 28 days notice for a request for more than 3 consecutive days, not to be reasonably denied save for the needs of the business), then the same notice you would be required to provide will legally (as an implied term if not contained within your contract) be reciprocated towards you from your employer.