Are employers obliged to pay holiday pay even when it has not been accrued, for example in the case of a new employee who takes a week off before they have accrued sufficient holiday entitlement to cover the full week?

Holiday entitlement for new employees is a common cause of confusion for many employers. The law on this issue is governed primarily by the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016. Employers are permitted, under these Regulations, to adopt an accrual system in order to calculate how much holiday leave an employee has accumulated during the first year of employment.

This means that, beginning from the first day of employment, employees start to accrue or build up their statutory holiday entitlement. Holiday leave accrues at the rate of 1/12 of a full year's entitlement at the beginning of each month. For example, a full-time worker in the sixth month of employment would have built