We have had further confirmation from the Employment Tribunals that the principle that holiday pay should be “normal remuneration” means that the calculation of holiday pay should include results based commission payments that a salesman would have earned had he been at work during the holiday period. However, the courts and tribunals are still avoiding giving any practical guidance on how this should be calculated.

We have previously looked at overtime and we know that guaranteed overtime and non-guaranteed overtime should be included in the calculation of holiday pay. The original case law did not cover voluntary overtime and so there was speculation as to whether this could be excluded from the calculation of holiday pay. The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has now held that the calculation of holiday pay should include voluntary overtime; this decision isn’t binding on English Employment Tribunals however it is a good indicator of the way a similar case might be decided here. When we looked at this originally, I advised that if voluntary overtime is worked with any degree of regularity then it should be included in the holiday pay calculation and I would still advise this.

In Plumb v Duncan Print Group Ltd the Employment Appeals Tribunal has held that where an employee cannot take holiday due to sickness absence then it will roll forward to the next holiday year and he will be permitted 18 months in which to take it.