One of the my staff has just handed in his letter of resignation after working with our firm for just under 6 months. His Contract of employment states that he has to give us 4 weeks notice if he terminates his employment with us after the probationary period of 3 months.
The problem is that a lot of my other staff are going to be off on their study leave shortly and with this staff resigning it will put us back in our work.

He has now indicated in writing that as he has about 10 days remaining holiday on a pro rata basis to end of Nov he wishes to utilise this to reduce the notice period by 10 days leaving him only 10 working days from today to work to. I am obviously really upset about all this.

My question is can I insist that he completes the full notice period and then we pay him for the accrued holidays to date due by theend of his notice period? Is that what the Employment Law states as well? The Contract does not state anything about above so it is open to interpretation I suppose.

The other question is that we have paid a considerable amount for his course fee in the anticipation that he will appear for the exams in Dec 06 but as he will be away can we insist on deducting this out of his salary before final payment? This clause has been included on his contract of employment.

All help will be appreciated at this most vulnerable time.

Vinod Davdra