Well that's him told

Yeap he had heard that I was wanting to take a sabbatical.

The HR lady (Susie) told my CTO (Richard) and my CTO told my Team Leader (Rob).

He was quite surprised at what I wanted to do and how long I wanted three months so he didn't know any details. He agreed that I wasn't asking for all that much unpaid leave as this years and next years holiday entitlement covers 2 thirds of it.
It was more a chance for me to put my point of view and mention a few thing I wanted them to know

1)I really had nothing from this company in the two years that I have worked here and I want to do something for me. and I feel angry and that the company is just taking advantage of me.
2)I was mainly holding out from telling them, waiting for the company to finally do something about promoting me, paying me a reasonable amount of money and sorting out all the holiday we have left.
3) Don't want to leave the company I want to ask for a sabbatical as I need a break from the less healthy madness that goes on in this company (some grown adults can really act like children when they don't get what they want)

I felt that as we where near the end of one project and before we started the new one this was probably the most suitable time to tell them.

I Rob said fair enough and that I should keep it quiet until he and Richard can sit down and come to a decision about it. He apologise for the promotions thing not being sorted out months ago and said it should be sorted out in the next couple of days. He said the sabbatical issue won't effect it (my major worry in case you hadn't guessed) and that it would be tied to a new skills matrix for the department which has been signed off and will be out soon.

So so far its going quite well, these are decent people and I wasn't expecting to be screwed by them. The problem may come when they have to OK whatever gets sorted with other parts of the company and they limit what we may be able to do.