Managing competing holiday requests

If an employer is faced with a sudden influx of annual leave requests for the school summer holiday period, particularly requests that are made at short notice, they should take account of the following:

• under the Working Time Regulations 1998, the general notice period for employees requesting to take annual leave is at least twice as long as the amount of leave they wish to take, e.g. an employee would need to give two weeks’ notice to request to take one week’s annual leave
• they can provide for alternative notice periods in employment contracts, and so if the contract says something different about the notice an employee should give to take annual leave, what’s in the contract will apply
• they can disregard the statutory/contractual notice requirements if they’re happy to agree to an employee taking annual leave at short notice – but should be careful about the precedent they’re setting here for the rest of the workforce
• even if the employee has given sufficient notice, the employer can still refuse their annual leave request, but the legislative position (again, subject to the employment contract not saying something different) is that they must give them as much notice of refusal as the amount of leave requested, e.g.  one week’s notice of refusal if the employee had requested one week’s annual leave
• if e any annual leave requests are refused, the employer should make sure that they have sound business reasons for  refusal, e.g. too many other employees are already due to be off on the dates requested, or it’s a peak time for the business
• if there are competing requests for annual leave, the employer should prioritise them in a fair, consistent and non-discriminatory way, e.g. first-come, first-served
• the employer should consider offering alternative annual leave dates to those whose requests are refused, and always check the terms of employment contracts and any holidays policy to see what they say on the issue.