Letter rejecting holiday request

There are many reasons why you might need to reject an employee's paid annual leave request, even if they've given you sufficient notice of their proposed days off. In this situation, you should always explain why it's not possible to accommodate it. Our letter rejecting annual leave request allows you to do this.

Sorry, no holiday

Sometimes, you'll have no choice but to reject an employee's request for annual leave. This could be because the:

• employee hasn't accrued sufficient time off (relevant in the first year of employment)
• dates requested fall at a particularly busy time for your business
• available leave during that period has already been allocated to other employees or managers
• employee has provided insufficient notice of their annual leave request
• employee has insufficient annual leave remaining in the current holiday year.

Either way, you should write to the employee notifying them that their request has been rejected and explain the reasons why. Our Letter Rejecting Holiday Request will help you here - just delete the reasons that don't apply.

Breaking the rules 

If the employee hasn't accrued sufficient paid leave, or has taken too much time off already, you can offer them unpaid leave (provided it suits your business needs).

However, if the employee goes ahead and takes the time off anyway, e.g. they simply don't show up at work or miraculously come down with a "bug" and phone in sick, you can investigate this as a potential disciplinary matter. This will be easy to identify if you follow a robust return to work interview process. Where time off has been taken without your permission or a reasonable excuse, it can amount to gross misconduct and warrant summary dismissal.