If You’re Ill and Can’t Take Your Holiday

This advice applies to England.

If you’re sick during your holiday or fall ill before it starts, you can ask your employer to treat the time off as sick leave instead. That way, you can save your holiday for when you’re well enough to enjoy it.

Sick Leave or Holiday – What’s Best?

Think about how your employer might react. If it’s a minor illness (like a cold), it might not be worth changing it. But if you’re seriously unwell—like being stuck in bed—it’s usually better to switch to sick leave.

Also consider your pay:

• If sick pay is lower than holiday pay, you might want to stick with holiday leave.

• If you don’t get paid for holidays, sick leave may be better.

If you’re on rolled-up holiday pay (an extra 12.07% added to your usual pay), your sick pay will be based on the average of this extra pay over the last 52 weeks. If the amount doesn’t seem right, speak to an adviser.

Letting Your Employer Know

Follow your usual sickness reporting process and ask for the time to be recorded as sick leave, even if you'd normally not need to report short-term illness.

Rebooking Your Holiday

You can take the holiday at a later date but must give the usual amount of notice.

On Long-Term Sick Leave and Claiming Benefits

If holiday pay is higher than your sick pay, it might push you over benefit limits. In that case, sick leave is often the safer option.

Carrying Over Holiday

Normally, you must use your holiday within the leave year. But if you’re too sick to take it, you can carry over up to 4 weeks into the next leave year.

• You have 18 months from the end of the original leave year to use the carried-over leave, or it will be lost.

Example 1:
Zarlashta’s leave year is January–December. She used 1 week of leave in April, then was sick the rest of the year. She can carry over 3 weeks into the next year.

Example 2:
Shakira was off sick from 1 May 2017, with no holiday taken that year. Her leave year is the calendar year, so she could take 4 weeks of holiday until 1 July 2019 (18 months after 2017 ended).

Want to Take Holiday While You’re Off Sick?

You can—just give the usual notice.

If You Work Irregular Hours or Part-Year

You can carry over up to 5.6 weeks of unused holiday due to sickness. Again, you have 18 months to use it from the start of the new leave year.