So our company parses out PTO throughout the year. No idea why.
But I suspect this last delay was to intentionally short us. We operate a business that provides a certain number of hours for another business, and it's well known we're majorly under our contract cause turnover is so high.
They've only given us our final PTO allotment this december, while also simultaneously suspending all bookings. Effectively making the PTO impossible to use.
There will also be no backpay for unused PTO, and no rollover of hours into next year.
As far as I know UK side of things it's not illegal to leave unspent PTO as unpaid, but man it's scummy.