Sickness during holiday


A. The situation is complicated because statutory annual leave of 5.6 weeks is made up of four weeks’ basic leave provided by EU law under the Working Time Directive, and 1.6 weeks’ additional leave, which is provided by UK law.

European case law has established that you can recover days lost through illness while you were on holiday, but this applies only to the EU-derived basic leave. This means that it will depend how much of your annual leave you have already used. 


The sickness must be recorded and backed up by medical evidence such as a certificate from a GP or hospital. 


Employers should be encouraged to negotiate a workplace policy to set out workers’ rights relating to holiday and sick leave so it’s clear how this works in practice. There’s no reason why reclaiming holiday lost through sickness must be restricted to the four weeks’ basic leave that the law requires, and employers may find it less of an administrative burden to allow their workers to apply reclamation of such sick days to all annual leave.