Parents should get priority over child free colleagues when booking annual leave, one journalist has claimed.

When kids are off school, parents should be entitled to preferential treatment for holiday allocation according to freelance journalist Rhiannon Picton-James.

On Newstalk Breakfast, Ms Picton-James said that if parents don’t get priority when it comes to annual leave “it blocks them from the workplace”.

"A massive pain"

“I think that they should get the priority when it comes to school holidays – so, that's the end of July [and] August,” she said.

Ms Picton-James said she regrets not considering her colleagues with children and how her holiday requests would affect them, when she was younger.

“I booked my holidays whenever I wanted [when I was younger],” she said.

“I had no idea when the school term was first of all, so I didn't realise that I was being a massive pain.

“I just thought, yeah, you're entitled to leave, you should be able to take it, you should be able to book up what you want [without] really considering my colleagues with children and how it was going to affect them.”

Both sides

Now that she has a child, Ms Picton-James said that she can “see both sides” of the situation and would tell herself in her 20s to “just book for June” instead.

“I think, you know what? If you want to book a holiday in July, you might as well book the last week of June - the weather is just as nice anywhere, but the flights are half the price, the hotels are half the price,” she said.

Summertime is an easier situation, but where the difficulty lies is with holidays like Easter or midterms.

Ms Picton-James insists there is “plenty of room for everyone to have time off”.

“Well, I have booked for Easter, and it's cost me two grand, I clicked the week before [and it is] £700 less,” she said.

“There's two weeks over Easter that I need in April, but there's still two weeks up for grabs, so there is plenty of room for everyone to have time off - I think you just need to juggle it around.”

Save "a lot of hassle"

The difference between employees taking time off is that some people want the time to “have fun” but for parents it stops them going to work Ms Picton-James said.

“If I can't get the leave off, I've got to take dependents leave, like really I've got to go no matter what happens,” she said.

“The Government needs to address it really.

“I think such an overhaul is obviously going to take too much time, and in the meantime, I think companies can introduce policies that give parents priority over certain times."

Giving advice to her younger self, Ms Picton-James said that if you work your holiday time around giving coworkers the school holidays off, “you're going to save so much money” and “you're going to save your colleagues a lot of hassle”.

Little Hands Exploring The Beach Sand. Image: Alamy