Holiday Pay Calculator UK

UK Holiday Entitlement

Every worker in the UK is legally entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave. For a full-time employee working five days a week, this equates to 28 days. The entitlement is set out in the Working Time Regulations 1998 and applies to almost all workers, including agency workers, those on zero-hours contracts, and workers with irregular hours. The only groups excluded are genuinely self-employed individuals and members of the armed forces.

The 28-day figure is a statutory minimum. Many employers offer more generous holiday allowances, sometimes increasing with length of service. It is common for UK employers to offer 25 days of discretionary holiday plus 8 bank holidays, giving a total of 33 days. Some organisations, particularly in the public sector, offer 30 or more days plus bank holidays, especially for long-serving employees.

Understanding your holiday entitlement is important not only for planning time off but also for understanding the true value of your employment package. Holiday pay represents a significant portion of your total remuneration, and its value is easily overlooked when comparing job offers. A role offering 33 days of holiday is materially more valuable than one offering the statutory minimum of 28, even if the headline salary is identical.

The statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days. Even if you work six or seven days a week, the law does not require your employer to give you more than 28 days. The 5.6-week formula gives exactly 28 days for a five-day week, and the cap ensures that workers on longer patterns do not receive a disproportionately high entitlement. However, your employer is free to offer more if they choose to.

Part-Time Workers

Part-time workers are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks of holiday as full-time workers, but the entitlement is calculated in proportion to the number of days they work each week. The formula is straightforward: multiply 5.6 by the number of working days per week.

For example, someone working three days a week is entitled to 5.6 × 3 = 16.8 days of paid holiday per year. A worker on a four-day week receives 5.6 × 4 = 22.4 days. Fractions of days can be taken as partial days or rounded up by the employer, but the employer cannot round down below the statutory entitlement.

This pro-rata approach ensures fairness between full-time and part-time employees. Under the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, it is unlawful for an employer to treat part-time workers less favourably than comparable full-time workers. This includes holiday entitlement, pay rates, and access to training and promotion opportunities.

If you work variable days from week to week, your entitlement is still 5.6 weeks, but calculating the number of days can be more complex. One approach is to calculate your average working days per week over a reference period (typically 52 weeks) and multiply by 5.6. Your employer should be able to tell you how many days of holiday you have accrued at any point in the year.

Bank Holidays

England and Wales have eight standard bank holidays each year: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, the early May bank holiday, the spring bank holiday, the summer bank holiday, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. Scotland has nine, and Northern Ireland has ten (with the addition of St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne).

A common misconception is that workers have a legal right to a day off on bank holidays. In fact, the law does not distinguish between bank holidays and any other day of the year. Your employer can require you to work on a bank holiday, provided your contract allows it, and many industries such as retail, hospitality, healthcare, and emergency services routinely do so.

What matters is the total holiday entitlement. An employer can include bank holidays within the statutory 28-day entitlement or offer them on top. If your contract states “20 days plus bank holidays,” you receive 28 days in total (matching the statutory minimum in a year with eight bank holidays). If it states “25 days plus bank holidays,” you receive 33 days, which exceeds the minimum. In either case, the bank holidays are simply part of your overall allowance.

If you are required to work on a bank holiday, your employer does not have to give you an enhanced rate of pay unless your contract specifies it. However, you are still entitled to take your full holiday entitlement, so working a bank holiday simply means you take a different day off instead.

Holiday Pay for Different Types of Workers

The way holiday pay is calculated can vary depending on your employment arrangement. For salaried employees with regular hours, the calculation is straightforward: you receive your normal pay during your holiday. Your daily rate is your annual salary divided by the total number of working days in the year (typically 260 for a five-day week over 52 weeks).

Zero-hours contract workers are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks of holiday as any other worker. Because their hours and pay fluctuate, holiday pay is calculated based on average weekly earnings over the previous 52 paid weeks, excluding any weeks in which no work was performed. This 52-week reference period, introduced in April 2020, replaced the previous 12-week window and provides a more accurate reflection of a worker's typical earnings, particularly for those with seasonal variation.

Shift workers whose shifts follow a regular cycle have their holiday pay calculated based on their normal shift pattern. If a worker's shifts vary in length, the holiday pay for each day of leave should reflect what they would have earned had they worked that day. For shift workers whose patterns are irregular, the 52-week average method is typically used.

Agency workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of holiday from day one of their assignment. The agency is responsible for providing holiday pay, not the end client. After 12 weeks in the same role, agency workers also gain the right to the same holiday terms as a directly employed worker doing the same job, if those terms are more generous than the statutory minimum.

Rolled-up holiday pay is a practice where an employer includes a holiday pay supplement in each pay packet rather than paying for holiday when it is taken. Following a 2024 legal change, rolled-up holiday pay is now explicitly permitted for irregular-hours workers and part-year workers from April 2024 onwards. The supplement is calculated as 12.07% of gross pay (which represents 5.6 weeks divided by 46.4 working weeks). For regular workers, however, the established position is that holiday should be paid when taken, and rolled-up holiday pay remains problematic.

How Holiday Accrues

Holiday entitlement accrues over the course of the holiday year. The holiday year is defined by your employer and may run from January to December, April to March, or from your start date. In the absence of a written agreement, the holiday year starts on the anniversary of the first day of employment.

Accrual is usually calculated on a monthly or weekly basis. For a full-time worker entitled to 28 days per year, the accrual rate is 28 ÷ 12 = 2.33 days per month. Over the first six months of the holiday year, a full-time worker accrues 14 days. This matters particularly for new starters and for employees leaving partway through the year, because the entitlement at any point is proportional to the time served.

When you leave your job, your employer must pay you for any holiday you have accrued but not taken. Conversely, if you have taken more holiday than you have accrued, your employer may deduct the overpayment from your final salary if your contract permits this. The calculation is based on the fraction of the holiday year that has elapsed.

For workers starting partway through the holiday year, the entitlement in the first year is pro-rated. If you join on 1 July and the holiday year runs from January to December, you are entitled to half the annual allowance (14 days for a full-time worker with 28 days). Most employers allow new starters to take holiday as it accrues rather than making them wait until a certain amount has built up.

Under the Working Time Regulations, workers are generally expected to take their holiday within the year it accrues. The regulations allow employers to include a use-it-or-lose-it clause for the additional 1.6 weeks (8 days) above the 4-week EU-derived minimum. However, holiday that could not be taken due to sickness or statutory leave (such as maternity or paternity leave) can typically be carried over into the next year. The rules around carry-over were clarified following several European Court of Justice rulings and subsequent UK case law, and employers should ensure their policies reflect these requirements.