Workers are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ annual leave per year, paid at the rate of a week’s pay for a week’s leave. How should holiday pay for a worker who only works for part of the year be calculated?
Lesley Brazel worked under a permanent employment contract on a zero hours basis, as a visiting music teacher for a school run by the Harpur Trust. She was required to take her 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave entitlement in the school holidays.
Harpur paid Mrs Brazel in respect of holiday at the end of each school term, calculated as 12.07% of Mrs Brazel’s earnings.
Mrs Brazel argued that this method of calculating holiday pay was wrong, and that she had therefore suffered unlawful deductions from her wages.
The case eventually reached the Supreme Court. The Court confirmed that all workers are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ annual leave per year; the fact that Mrs Brazel only worked for part of the year did not change this entitlement.
The correct way to calculate holiday pay for employees with no normal working hours is set out in legislation, which would currently require employers to take an average of the worker’s weekly pay for the last 52 weeks, excluding any weeks that the worker was not paid.
Read the full judgment here.
