Redundancy pay / accrued holiday

drr93

I have been on furlough since the beginning of April and not hopeful I will have a job to come back to as the job retention scheme begins to wind down. Last month, my employer asked us to book 2/3 of our annual leave by August to help manage the back log of untaken holiday otherwise we are at risk of losing these days for the rest of the year. However, given my concern at the risk of redundancy, the holiday days I have accrued this year would be worth far more as additional payment from 'holiday owed' rather than them topping up my salary by 20%.
I had block booked them in August for the sake of not losing them and getting the 20% top up pay on those dates but I am thinking it might be wiser to keep them in the 'redundancy bank' so to speak. Can my employer force me to take those days now? Or prevent me from doing this now that i have booked them?
Thank you

JReacher1

Your employer can both force you to take the holiday now and if they did make you redundant they could also force you to take your holiday days during your notice period.   There is no guarantee they would pay you for these days. 

TBagpuss

Yes, as JReacher says, your employer can tell you to take holiday and when to take it, as look as they give you the necessary notice.
They could also require you to take it during your notice period if you were to be made redundant,(again subject to them providing you with the required notice of 2 times the length of the holiday)  so even if they were to let you cancel it now, that wouldn't necessarily mean that you would get it paid out if you are made redundant.