Employees who are sick during scheduled annual leave should be allowed to reallocate their holidays, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

The decision, a new interpretation of the working time directive, follows the ECJ’s ruling on the Stringer case earlier this year that holiday continues to accrue during sick leave. Stringer found that a worker could carry leave forward, even into the next year, if he or she is “unable to take leave through no fault of his own”, but left open the question of what would happen if sickness coincided with scheduled leave.