Employers struggling with the recent changes to holiday pay calculations have at least been able to find some comfort in the Deduction from Wages (Limitation) Regulations 2014, which limited claims for back pay to a maximum of 2 years.

Unfortunately, the legality of those Regulations has now been thrown into doubt by the European Court of Justice in the case of King v Sash Windows. The ECJ ruled that a claim for back pay should be permitted to go right back to 1996, when the original EU Working Time Directive came into force. For those businesses who are currently disputing worker status on a large scale (Uber, CitySprint, Pimlico Plumbers etc), the ramifications could be massive.