The minimum holiday entitlement under the EU Directive is four weeks. However, the UK set its minimum at 5.6 weeks.
Where workers have been unable to take their holiday entitlement due to sickness, they are entitled to carry any untaken holiday into the next holiday year. However, a recent case has held that this is limited to a maximum of the EU’s four weeks. Thus, if a worker in the UK had been off sick for the whole year, they would only carry forward four weeks and lose 1.6 weeks.