Holidays Act Remediation

The Holidays Act 2003 governs minimum leave entitlements, including the amount of leave you receive, how you become entitled to leave, and the method for calculating pay while you are on leave. It covers annual holidays (annual leave), sick leave, bereavement leave, public holidays, and alternative holidays.

The Holidays Act 2003 is a complex piece of legislation and most current payroll systems cannot be configured to completely comply with the legislation without manual intervention.

The issues we’ve identified relate to how our former payroll system was configured to calculate pay while on leave. Here are a couple of examples of issues that were identified:

• Incorrect calculation of payments for sick, bereavement, public holidays and alternative holidays for employees that worked fluctuating hours or received fluctuating pay.
• Incorrect calculation of annual leave where an employee also received certain regular allowance payments.

We fixed these calculations in our new payroll system, Ngātahi, which we moved to on 5 June 2021. However, we also needed to review the first 12 months in the new system (5 June 2021 to 4 June 2022) because one of the calculations for annual leave uses the previous 12 months earnings to calculate the amount to be paid and some of this information, which came from our former payroll system, was potentially incorrect.

We have completed payments to current employees and are now repaying former employees. If you were employed by Greater Wellington between 1 June 2010 and 4 June 2022 you may be eligible for a remediation payment. Employees who received additional payments over and above their standard salary e.g. standby payments or higher duties allowances, were the most impacted.

Former employees who worked at Greater Wellington when the first remediation payment was made on 18 March 2022 but not when the remediation payment for the first 12 months of Ngātahi was paid on 28 July 2023 may also be entitled to a remediation payment.

Greater Wellington became aware of potential non-compliance following a report completed by Deloitte in June 2016. We are required to go back 6 years from the date we were made aware of the issue.

Complete an application form

To apply, you will need to provide some information for us to confirm your identity. Then, if you are owed money, you’ll need to provide further information for us to make the payment.

Yes, if you are acting on behalf of an estate or have power of attorney for a former employee. Additional information will be required to prove you are entitled to claim on behalf of the former employee.