One man accumulated a backlog of over three years of holiday after being denied annual leave because his employer was short-staffed.

Mossadek Ageli was awarded £392,000, the value of the 827 days of untaken holiday, as well as an extra £105,000 in compensation by an employment tribunal. He won his unfair dismissal case against Sabtina, a property management company in Watford. Ageli joined the firm, a subsidiary of the Libyan Foreign Investment Company, in 1987, working as a deputy managing director and then a commercial manager. His original holiday allocation was 30 days, going up to 45 by 1996. He took no holiday leave in the ‘80s because he was one of the company’s only full-time employees. Through the ‘90s, company directors refused Ageli’s holiday requests. In 1998, he agreed with the directors that instead of taking a holiday, he would be paid for it.

Ageli told the tribunal: “After years of doing this, it was agreed that there was no need to send any future paperwork for approval or denial, and I simply kept a record of my holiday entitlement.”

As the company didn’t have a pension scheme, Ageli and his personal assistant saved their holiday “for when needed or at retirement”.

He was paid £15,000 in lieu of holiday in both 2001 and 2004, but in all other years, it was agreed that it would roll over to a future payment.

In 2022, Sabtina’s board of directors was replaced, and the new team demanded proof of the deal. They also began taking duties away from Ageli.

Ageli was fired two years later for alleged gross misconduct, which he denied. Directors also told him that he wouldn’t be paid for the 827 days of holiday he hadn’t taken since 1998.

He sued Sabtina and a judge ordered the company to pay the full amount of holiday pay, £392,000, as well as compensation for unfair dismissal, £10,000.

Judge George Alliot said that Sabtina “did not have a genuine belief” that Ageli had committed gross misconduct.