Can Illness on Holiday Be Claimed as Sick Days?

You may be surprised to know that the answer to the question, "Can illness on holiday be claimed as sick leave" is actually "Yes". Whether or not you think this is a good idea probably depends on your role – a company boss is likely to be horrified, whereas an employee is possibly already on their way to the travel agents.

Cost to British Business

It may seem ludicrous to the realistic, hard-working employees among us that illness on holiday can be taken as sickness rather than holiday entitlement. The CBI (Confederation of British Industry), the UK’s leading business lobby organisation, would agree, especially as long-term illness already costs UK businesses over £5.3 billion each year.

However, a recent re-interpretation of the EU Working Time Directive has decided that holiday entitlement can be ‘relocated’, thanks to a new ruling. It states that the employee can claim statutory sick leave if their holiday is ‘spoilt by illness’, but phoning in sick as per the normal sickness procedure in their place of work if they happen to become ill on holiday, rather than it simply being bad luck.

The previous approach was more of a ‘common sense and fairness’ attitude, where perhaps if an employee was sick on a day of their holiday it was still taken as holiday, but a long-term illness may allow for something to be arranged between HR and the employee.

Vast Potential for Abuse of the System

The new ruling is centred round the employee’s circumstances of the ‘inability to take leave through no fault of their own’. Of course, this leaves the door open for potential abuse from unmotivated or careless employees wishing to boost their holiday entitlement and it may be that a few bad apples spoil it for the rest of us.

A widely-reported case that has also lead up to this new development is the so-called Stringer case, where an HMRC employee became ill prior to a month-long holiday and it was decided that the individual was able to postpone their holiday rather than ‘use it up’ whilst ill. There have also been cases where the employees right to accrue holiday entitlement has been maintained whilst on long-term sick leave.

The Letter and the Spirit of the Law

It is worth noting that the letter of the law is often not the spirit of the law. Just because we are perhaps ‘legally entitled’ to something does not mean that it is right to claim it, but, indeed, just because an employer can ‘get away’ with something does not mean that they should.

As with so many aspects of working rights, the law is there to give us all a framework within which to work and we all, employees and employers, have a responsibility to be fair. As long as employees do not call in sick on holiday just because they’ve overdone the sangria, then employers will be able to offer a fair deal to those that really deserve to be given a portion of their holiday as sick leave.