The Working Time Regulations 1998 provide that employees must, as a minimum, give notice of proposed annual leave dates which is at least twice the number of days as those the employee wishes to take as annual leave e.g. two weeks' notice for one week's leave and four weeks' notice for two weeks' leave.  The regulations do enable contractual provisions to set out different notice provisions and it is therefore quite common for some employment contracts to provide a minimum of, say, one month's notice for all requests for annual leave, regardless of the duration of leave requested.

But, what happens where the employee wants to take leave right at the end of the holiday year and there is not enough time left to give adequate notice?