United Kingdom: government relaxes law on paid leave in response to coronavirus crisis

On 27 March the UK government announced that, under the Working Time (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, which will modify the Working Time Regulations 1998, employees will be able to carry over their 2020 annual leave to the following two years. Currently, the majority of UK employees are entitled to 28 days of paid leave per year, bank holidays included. If employees do not make use of all those leave days during the year, they often expire, although certain companies pay their workers for days of annual leave they don’t take. Meanwhile employers can be fined if their employees have been unable to book all their days of leave. Under this amendment, the Conservative government is giving UK workers two more years in which to take their 2020 leave entitlement. “This will protect staff from losing out, while providing businesses with flexibility when they need it most,” says business secretary Alok Sharma, speaking in place of prime minister Boris Johnson, who is in quarantine having tested positive for Covid-19 in recent days. This move seeks in particular to help employees in key sectors (food, healthcare, etc.) to keep on working during the pandemic but also, more broadly, to lift pressure on companies struggling with the Covid-19 crisis.