UK’s part-year workers entitled to full paid annual leave, court rules
Thousands of teachers on term-time-only contracts, and workers with similar arrangements, could be entitled to back pay after a ruling by the UK’s highest court.
The supreme court judgment on Wednesday means such employees should receive the same amount of paid annual leave as their colleagues working all year around.
Employers who previously pro-rated the holiday entitlement of people working part of the year on permanent contracts will have to change their practices, and could also face claims for underpaying staff in the past.
The five supreme court justices were asked to consider whether Lesley Brazel, a music teacher with a continuing contract but who worked only certain weeks of the year, was entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave, the minimum stipulated by the UK Working Time Regulations (WTR).
Her employer, Harpur Trust, a charity that runs Bedford Girls’ School, where Brazel works, argued that she was not entitled to the 5.6 weeks afforded to full-time workers and that Brazel’s leave entitlement should be calculated proportionally so the weeks in which she did not work reduced her paid annual leave.
The judges unanimously found in favour of Brazel, upholding a decision of the court of appeal. In the written judgment, Lady Rose and Lady Arden wrote that Harpur had argued “that the construction upheld by the court of appeal leads to an absurd result, that absurdity being that a worker in Mrs Brazel’s position (and in the position of some of the other hypothetical workers posited by the Harpur Trust) receives holiday pay which represents a higher proportion of her annual pay than full-time or part-time workers who work regular hours.
“We recognise, of course, that a construction which leads to an absurd result is, in
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