Request to cancel booked annual leave
Cancellations
As a result of the flight cancellations and travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, many employees have found that their holiday plans have been scuppered.
Some have had holidays cancelled altogether by tour operators, whereas others have been given the option to move bookings to a later date.
No longer needed
It’s highly likely that an employee could ask to cancel a pre-booked period of annual leave. They could also assume that they have the right to cancel any holiday automatically.
However, employees have no general right to cancel holiday once it’s been booked with you unless their employment contract or your holidays policy says otherwise.
Note. Neither do you have to agree to a cancellation, i.e. you can insist that the employee takes their booked holiday as originally planned.
Things to consider
If cancelling the employee’s holiday might suit your business needs, there are some things you should consider before you agree:
- will the employee actually be able to take this annual leave in your current holiday year, e.g. is there sufficient time and capacity available in your current leave year?
- could agreeing to the request leave you short staffed later on? This is a possibility where several staff ask to change their pre-booked annual leave plans or haven’t booked all of their holiday yet
- are you able to treat all of your staff fairly and consistently in terms of holiday cancellation requests? As far as possible, rules should be applied equally to all staff.
Tip. Depending on the answers to these questions, it may be more appropriate to insist that the holiday is taken as arranged. That said, you could have a rule where exceptions are only made for specific events, e.g. cancelled honeymoons.
Carry over
In the event that you permit a cancellation, you should re-credit the holiday and advise the employee that they have to take their four weeks’ statutory paid annual leave before the end of your holiday year otherwise they will lose that statutory entitlement (see The next step ).
Risk. The employee will have a right to carry that leave over into your next holiday year if you don’t give them this notification.
Cancelled due to sickness
The only time an employee has an express right to have pre-booked holiday cancelled and carried forward to another time is where they become ill or incapacitated before or during it. This would include where they contract coronavirus or are advised to self-isolate because of it. We’ve set the rules out in our holidays policy (see The next step ).
For a letter recrediting holiday and a holidays policy, visit http://tipsandadvice-personnel.co.uk/download (PS 22.08.04).
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