Our company made a change to its holiday rules, asking us to use 75% of our annual leave entitlement before 30 September 2020.
This was announced prior to the Working Time Regulations 2020 Coronavirus Amendment, which allows employees who cannot "reasonably" take a holiday due to the effects of coronavirus to carry unused entitlement forwards two years.
After the change to the regulation came into effect the company has not changed it's position on using 75% of holidays.
Our minimum holiday entitlement is generous (27 days), and given the ability to purchase extra days I am in a position where I would have to take 5 weeks off between now and September. This is untenable for a number of reasons (high workload, single point of failure, nowhere to go in self isolation etc.).
Can my employer disregard the new Working Time Regulations and force me to take the leave/risk losing unused days, or am I allowed to carry over the holidays as per the regulations?
To provide context, the location is the UK, the industry is financial services and my role has allowed me to work BAU from home with little impact. The holiday year runs Jan to Dec and the (company) financial year ends in Sep.