Police officers and civilian staff in Northern Ireland are entitled to claim for underpayments of holiday pay going back many years following their employer’s failure to include overtime in its holiday pay calculations because: (1) the EU principle of equivalence requires the police officers to be allowed the more advantageous series extension found in the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 even though they are not workers for the purposes of that legislation, (2) the series extension is therefore read into the relevant part of the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 to achieve this, and (3) what constitutes a series of deductions is a question of fact which does not require a contiguous sequence and is not necessarily brought to an end by a gap of three months or a correct payment if that correct payment was calculated when the claimants were at work. Further, (1) there is no legal requirement that leave derived from different sources must be taken in a particular order, (2) it is inappropriate to apply a general principle of using calendar days in the reference period when calculating a worker’s normal pay, and (3) the appropriate reference period when calculating normal pay in any case is a question of fact, according to the Supreme Court.
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