Hitting the buffers

'The buffers are hit under UK law if there is no time left, because the illness has continued past the end of that holiday year'

Stringer v HMRC C-520/06 is the long-awaited decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the “Ainsworth” litigation on the position of a person on long-term sickness absence, in relation to statutory holidays under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1833). It was remitted by the House of Lords (to whom it must now return) and was heard alongside a German case (Schutz-Hoff C-350/06). Th e German case raised essentially the same points, but with one slight complication (which appears at certain points in the judgment); German law allows an employee to carry forward unused holiday entitlement past the end of the holiday year, but only for a period of three months (referred to in the judgment as the “carry-over period”). UK law (in Reg 13(9)(a)) enacts a complete ban on carrying forward, though this