Can You Take Annual Leave While Off Sick? UK Rules

Yes, you can take annual leave while off sick — but only if you ask for it. Acas is clear that an employer cannot force a worker to take holiday while off sick; the request has to come from the worker, and the employer then decides whether to approve it.

That asymmetry is the whole answer, and it is the part most policies get wrong. Employers cannot use annual leave to burn down a long absence. Employees can convert sick days to holiday days, usually for the very practical reason that holiday pay is several times Statutory Sick Pay.

Key Takeaways

• Taking annual leave while off sick is the worker’s choice, not the employer’s. Forced conversion is unlawful.
• The usual motive is money: holiday pay is a full week’s pay; SSP is £123.25 a week for 2026/27, or 80% of average weekly earnings if lower.
• Approved holiday pauses the sick leave. Those days count as annual leave, and the sickness absence resumes afterwards.
• Days spent on annual leave do not count toward the 28-week SSP maximum, but they do consume your holiday balance.

Why Would Anyone Take Holiday While Off Sick?

Three reasons come up repeatedly, and all three are legitimate.

Pay. This is the big one. Someone on SSP receives £123.25 a week for the 2026/27 tax year, or 80% of their average weekly earnings if that is lower (GOV.UK). Someone on annual leave receives a full week’s pay. For a worker whose company sick pay has run out, converting a fortnight of absence into a fortnight of annual leave can be the difference between covering the rent and not.

Recovery. Acas recognises that a worker may want holiday during sick leave where they are not fit for work but are fit for a break, where a mental health condition might be helped by a holiday, or where a change of scene supports recovery from long-term absence. Being signed off does not mean being housebound.

Balance protection. If you are approaching the end of a leave year with a large untaken balance, using some of it during a long absence is often more useful than carrying it into an 18-month window you may struggle to use.

Can My Employer Make Me Take Annual Leave While Off Sick?

No. An employer cannot compel a worker to take annual leave during sickness absence, and cannot unilaterally reclassify sick days as holiday to reduce the cost of an absence or to stop a holiday balance building up.

This is worth stating flatly because the opposite instinct is common. A manager looking at nine months of absence and a full untaken holiday entitlement will reasonably think “why not just book the holiday and clear it”. The answer is that annual leave exists to be rest from work, and someone on sick leave is not resting from work — the conversion has to be a genuine choice by the worker.

There is one adjacent power that does exist and is often confused with this. Under regulation 15 of the Working Time Regulations 1998, an employer can require a worker to take annual leave on specified dates by giving notice of at least twice the length of the leave. That power applies to workers who are at work — a Christmas shutdown, say. It is not a route to imposing holiday on someone who is signed off sick.

How Does the Swap Actually Work?

Mechanically, approved holiday pauses the sickness absence rather than running alongside it. Acas puts it this way: sick leave can be paused while the worker takes holiday, and the worker gets holiday pay for those days.

Step by step:

1. The worker requests the leave, in writing, naming the dates. This should follow the normal holiday request process.
2. The employer approves or declines on the normal grounds. Approval is not automatic, but a refusal should have a real reason behind it.
3. The approved days are recorded as annual leave, deducted from the holiday balance, and paid as holiday pay.
4. Sickness absence resumes on the day after the holiday ends, assuming the worker is still unfit.
5. Both sides confirm the outcome in writing. Acas recommends documenting the agreement on whether time counts as sickness or holiday.

Step 5 does more work than it looks. A retrospective argument about whether week 14 of an absence was sick leave or holiday is very hard to resolve without a contemporaneous record.

Sick Pay vs Holiday Pay: The Comparison That Drives the Decision

	Sick leave (SSP only)	Annual leave
Weekly pay	£123.25, or 80% of average weekly earnings if lower	A full week’s pay
Maximum duration	28 weeks of SSP	Your holiday balance
Counts against SSP’s 28 weeks	Yes	No
Reduces holiday balance	No — accrual continues	Yes
Who can initiate	Either	Worker only

Run one worked case. Amira earns £600 a week and her company sick pay ran out at week 12. She has 15 untaken days. Staying on SSP, weeks 13 to 15 pay her £369.75 in total. Converting those three weeks to annual leave pays £1,800 and uses 15 of her holiday days.

Whether that trade is right depends on how likely she is to use those 15 days later. If she is on a long absence and heading toward the 4-week carry-over cap anyway, converting is often the better outcome. If she expects to return in a month and wants a summer break, it is not.

Does Taking Holiday Affect My Sick Pay Entitlement?

It pauses it rather than reducing it. Days taken as annual leave are not qualifying days for SSP purposes, so they do not eat into the 28-week SSP maximum. If the absence continues after the holiday, SSP resumes on the normal basis, subject to the linking rules for separate periods of incapacity.

One caution: converting a chunk of absence to holiday can affect company sick pay schemes that count absence in a rolling 12-month window. Those schemes are contractual and vary enormously. Check the wording before assuming the conversion is cost-neutral for your occupational scheme.

What This Means for You

For employees: if your sick pay has dropped and you have holiday sitting untouched, ask. Put the request in writing, name the dates, and keep the approval. You are not obliged to explain why you want the days.

For employers: write the rule into your policy in both directions — the worker may request it, you will not impose it — and make sure your absence records can hold a holiday block inside a sickness period without corrupting the totals. Getting the absence categories right also keeps your absence rate and Bradford Factor figures honest, since a converted week should not read as a fresh absence spell.

Leave Balance lets a manager approve annual leave inside an open sickness absence, keeps the two record types distinct in reporting, and shows the remaining balance and its expiry before the decision is made. Flat $10/month, unlimited employees, 14-day free trial.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Statutory entitlements described are correct as at July 2026; check GOV.UK or take advice for your specific circumstances.