In a remedy judgment sent to the parties on 10 March 2026, Employment Judge Alliott at Watford awarded Mohamed Ageli £391,942.77 for 827.25 days of untaken annual leave accrued over 37 years at Sabtina Limited, a company whose parent is in Libya. A further £105,559.73 followed for unfair dismissal: a basic award of £14,070 and a compensatory award of £91,489.73, each reflecting a one-third deduction for contributory conduct. The total is £497,502.50.

The Facts

Mr Ageli joined Sabtina in June 1987 as deputy managing director. For the first three years he took no holiday: he and his PA were the only full-time staff. Twenty-two memos signed by the managing director record some 205 days of requested holiday refused between 1988 and 1996 for pressure of work. From 1998 the memos record that he had been unable to take his leave, and in 2001 and 2002 the managing director approved payment in lieu of it “as and when needed”. He was paid £15,150 in 2001 and £14,920 in 2004, and the tribunal credited those periods against the balance; the rest continued to accrue.

His contractual entitlement was 45 days per year. After a board reshuffle in May 2022, new directors gradually stripped his duties and, in March 2024, dismissed him by email for “gross misconduct” — without particulars, investigation, or appeal. The Tribunal found that Sabtina “did not have a genuine belief” that he had committed gross misconduct, found a total failure to follow the Acas Code, and uplifted the compensatory award by 25%.

The Calculation

Try the numbers yourself. The calculator below is pre-loaded with approximate Ageli figures (salary estimated from the £392,000 / 827-day ratio; 45-day entitlement; ~13 days taken per year on average; £30,000 already paid in lieu).

Click Ageli v Sabtina (2026) in the preset bar to load the case figures, or enter your own. The workings panel on the right shows each step.

Practical takeaways

Under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (as amended from 1 January 2024), the four-week EU-derived entitlement carries over for up to 18 months if the employer fails to facilitate leave or the worker is on sick leave. But Ageli’s award went far beyond that statutory backstop: the Tribunal enforced the contractual agreement to roll forward leave indefinitely. Where an employer has agreed — expressly or by long-standing custom — to bank untaken days, the liability crystallises on termination regardless of the statutory carry-over caps.

For employers, the message is plain: unmanaged leave accrual is a balance-sheet time bomb. For employees denied leave year after year, Ageli, a first-instance decision, shows that a contractual debt does not simply evaporate.