If you are off work due to illness, worrying about your holiday entitlement is probably the last thing on your mind. However, it is a common source of confusion for both employees and employers in the UK.
The short answer is yes. Under UK law, holiday pay continues to accrue while you are off sick.
This article explains exactly how it works, covering statutory rights, long-term sickness, and what to do if your employer gets it wrong.
In a long-overdue display of accountability, the government has released a list of employers caught stealing from their own staff — underpaying workers by thousands, in some cases for years. While several companies have since offered apologies and blamed “administrative oversights,” workers’ rights advocates say the pattern reveals a systemic disregard for the livelihoods of working people.
Among the worst offenders in north-west England was discount supermarket chain B&M Bargains Ltd, which owed a single employee in Liverpool £3,304 over just three months. In Greater Manchester, car trader Roger Irving failed to pay a worker a staggering £34,861 between December 2017 and June 2023. Meanwhile, Accrington Surgical Instrument Suppliers Ltd in Hyndburn short-changed an employee £3,862 over five months in 2025.
For millions of UK workers, the day doesn’t start when they swipe a badge — it starts the moment they pull on a uniform, boot up a work system, or load a company van. If your employer requires you to perform tasks before your official shift, you need to know your rights under the working time regulations.
A recent government crackdown has made headlines by fining major retailers for failing to pay staff for this exact type of time. High Street giant Holland & Barrett was ordered to repay more than £153,000 to over 2,500 workers, proving that preparation time is legally considered work.
A staggering new analysis from the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has exposed the scale of exploitation silently plaguing the UK’s workplaces: last year, workers were effectively forced to hand over £28.5 billion of their own wages back to their employers.
While corporations enjoyed the fruits of this free labour, one in eight UK employees—a staggering 3.5 million people—were pressured into working extra hours for absolutely nothing in return. According to the TUC’s findings, the average worker sacrificed £8,100 of their hard-earned pay in 2025 by clocking up an average of nearly seven unpaid hours every single week. In total, the workforce contributed a mind-boggling 1.2 billion hours of labour for which they were not compensated.