Ian Smith reflects on the unstoppable tide of EC law on health, happiness and TUPE
'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 has looked dubious since the ECJ seemed to anticipate a
