Your Statutory Right to Paid Time Off
In the United Kingdom, every worker is entitled to paid holiday by law. This is not a perk or a bonus offered by generous employers, it is a right written into the Working Time Regulations 1998 and reinforced by decades of case law from both UK tribunals and the European Court of Justice. If you have a contract of employment or a worker's contract, you qualify, even if you only work a few hours a week, and your employer cannot sign this right away in exchange for extra cash.
The headline figure is 5.6 weeks of paid leave per year, which translates to 28 days for a full time worker doing a standard five day week. For anyone working a different pattern, the same multiplier still applies, which is why the calculator on this page is so useful. A three day a week worker earns 16.8 days, a zero hours warehouse picker accrues 12.07 per cent of every hour worked, and a term time school assistant has their entitlement scaled down to reflect the weeks they are contracted to work.
Where things get complicated is in the detail. Whether bank holidays are included within or granted on top of the 28 days, how holiday pay is calculated for workers with variable earnings, how carry over interacts with long term sickness and maternity leave, and how entitlement is worked out when you start or leave a job mid year all depend on a combination of statute, contract and custom. The paragraphs below walk through each of these in plain British English.
This page and its calculator reflect 2025/26 rules, including the post January 2024 regime that permits rolled up holiday pay for irregular hours workers and part year workers. If you are reading this because your employer has offered something that sounds like less than the statutory minimum, or has been unclear about bank holiday treatment, the sections below should give you enough to push back politely and accurately.
How Pro Rata Calculations Really Work
Pro rata simply means in proportion, and for holiday entitlement it is how part time workers are brought into line with their full time colleagues. The underlying rule is always 5.6 weeks per year, multiplied by whatever the worker's normal working week looks like. A full timer on five days gets 28 days. A four day a week employee gets 5.6 multiplied by 4, which is 22.4 days. A three day a week worker gets 16.8 days. A half day Friday plus four full days gives 5.6 multiplied by 4.5, or 25.2 days.
When the maths produces a fraction, the law requires employers to round up, never down. So a 2.5 day a week worker whose entitlement is exactly 14 days needs no rounding, but a 3.5 day worker on 19.6 days must be given 20 when the employer keeps the leave register in whole days. Many firms simplify by tracking holiday in hours rather than days, which sidesteps the rounding problem entirely.
Hours based calculations use the same logic. A worker doing 20 hours a week against a 40 hour full time norm accrues half of the full time allowance. In hour terms, 5.6 weeks of a 40 hour week is 224 hours, so the 20 hour worker gets 112 hours per year. Shift workers on irregular rotas often prefer this approach because it maps cleanly onto their actual shift lengths, rather than forcing a fictional "day" into every week.
Starting mid way through a leave year triggers a further pro rata calculation. If you join in month four of a twelve month leave year, you earn eight twelfths of the annual entitlement for that year, with subsequent leave years reset to the full amount. Leaving mid year works the same way, which is why your final payslip often includes a line for accrued but untaken holiday.
Worked Examples for Different UK Working Patterns
These scenarios show how the rules land for real life UK contracts. They assume the leave year runs April to March and the employer counts bank holidays inside the 28 day allowance unless otherwise stated.
Example 1: Three day a week office worker
Aisha works Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday every week in a central Manchester admin role. Her statutory entitlement is 5.6 multiplied by 3, giving 16.8 days. Her employer rounds up to 17 days. Because the three days she works never include a Monday, she effectively loses several bank holidays compared with a full timer. Many employers adjust for this by crediting part timers with a pro rata share of bank holidays separately, in her case about 4.8 extra days.
Example 2: Zero hours retail assistant
Tom works at a Leeds coffee chain on zero hours. In his first three months he logs 240 hours. At 12.07 per cent accrual, he has earned 28.97 hours of paid holiday. His hourly rate is £11.44, so those hours are worth £331 if paid out. Under the rolled up holiday pay regime introduced in January 2024, his employer can instead add 12.07 per cent onto each payslip and label it as holiday pay, provided Tom is still allowed to take the leave unpaid if he wishes.
Example 3: Term time classroom assistant
Priya is contracted for 39 weeks a year at a primary school in Bristol, working Monday to Friday. Her annual hours are 39 multiplied by 32.5, or 1,267.5. Her holiday entitlement is calculated as 12.07 per cent of that, giving about 153 hours. Because schools close during school holidays, her paid leave is usually averaged across 12 monthly payslips so her pay is level year round, even though she only physically works in term.
Example 4: Nurse on a compressed four day week
Dafydd is an agency nurse working long 12 hour shifts over four days each week. His entitlement is 5.6 multiplied by 4, giving 22.4 days, which is 22.4 multiplied by 12 hours, or 268.8 hours per year. On paper this looks less than a five day full timer, but his daily hours mean the total paid time off in hours is similar. Calculating in hours rather than days prevents confusion during long shift patterns.
Bank Holidays, Substitute Days and Contract Wording
A surprising number of UK workers assume that bank holidays are automatically paid days off. They are not. Public and bank holidays in the UK have no standalone statutory right attached, and whether you get them as leave depends entirely on what your contract says. The 5.6 week entitlement is the legal floor, and an employer can choose to include the eight English bank holidays within that floor or grant them on top.
Scotland has nine bank holidays, Northern Ireland has ten, and Wales shares its eight with England. If your employer operates across the UK, check which regional calendar they apply to your contract. Substitute days, where a bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday and the government moves the day off to the following Monday, are part of the official calendar and count the same way.
If your contract is silent on the subject, the default position is that bank holidays sit inside the 28 day allowance. Practical implication, if you want a particular bank holiday off, you need to book it as part of your leave balance like any other day. If your contract expressly grants bank holidays on top, you typically have the full 28 days to book freely plus the public days automatically off.
Workers on irregular rotas, such as hospitality and healthcare staff, often find that bank holidays fall naturally on days they are scheduled to work. In those cases the right to a paid day off is usually expressed as an entitlement to enhanced pay for working the holiday, or time off in lieu, rather than the day itself. Check the staff handbook if you are unsure, and ask HR to confirm in writing if the contract is ambiguous.
Carrying Over Unused Leave Between Years
The Working Time Regulations set a general rule that statutory holiday must be taken in the leave year it is accrued, on a use it or lose it basis. The logic is that paid leave exists to protect worker health and wellbeing, so allowing indefinite carry over would defeat the purpose. In practice, however, life does not always cooperate with a neat annual calendar, and both legislation and case law have carved out important exceptions.
Long term sickness is the clearest exception. If you are unable to take your leave because of illness, the four weeks of EU derived holiday must be carried forward for up to 18 months beyond the end of the leave year. The additional 1.6 weeks of UK specific holiday can also be carried forward for one year by agreement with the employer. For the worker, this means a period of long sickness does not cost them their leave balance, it simply delays when it can be used.
Maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave trigger similar protections. Holiday continues to accrue during these absences, and any leave that cannot reasonably be taken before the parent returns is carried into the next year. Many employees choose to tack accrued holiday onto the start or end of their maternity leave to extend their time away with pay, which is perfectly legitimate.
A third exception covers cases where the employer prevented the worker from taking leave, for example by refusing all requests or by failing to tell them their leave balance. Following the Max Planck v Shimizu ruling and subsequent UK case law, workers in this position have up to 18 months after the end of the leave year to use the carried over leave, and in some cases it accumulates indefinitely until employment ends.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The first mistake is confusing 5.6 weeks with 28 days universally. The figure only equals 28 for a five day full timer. Part timers who do a three or four day week have a lower daily entitlement and should not be promised 28 days regardless of pattern. Equally, a six day a week worker's entitlement is capped at 28 days, because the 5.6 week multiplier is limited to 28 days maximum by statute.
The second mistake is ignoring regular overtime and commission when calculating holiday pay. If your basic weekly pay is £500 but you regularly earn another £150 in shift allowances and voluntary overtime, your holiday pay should reflect the £650 figure averaged over the past 52 weeks. The Bear Scotland v Fulton ruling established that overtime which is regularly worked must be included, and more recent case law has extended this to commission and performance bonuses.
The third mistake is thinking accrual starts on your first anniversary. It does not. The law gives you the right to accrue holiday from day one, although some contracts restrict when that leave can be taken during a probationary period. Even then, you continue to accrue, so that any leave built up during probation can be used once the probationary restriction lifts, or paid out if you leave before it does.
The fourth mistake is assuming rolled up holiday pay covers you for regular fixed hours work. It does not. Since January 2024, rolled up pay is legal for irregular hours and part year workers only. Regular full time and part time workers must receive their holiday pay at the point they take the leave, based on their normal weekly earnings. If your employer is currently rolling up your pay and you work a fixed rota, you have grounds to raise the matter with HR or ACAS.
What Happens When You Leave Your Job
Whenever employment ends, whether through resignation, dismissal, redundancy or retirement, any accrued but untaken statutory holiday must be paid out in your final wage. The calculation is straightforward, work out what fraction of the leave year you completed, apply that to your annual entitlement, subtract days already taken, and convert the remaining days into pounds at your normal day rate.
For someone on £36,000 who has used 12 of 28 days by the time they leave at month eight of the leave year, the calculation runs like this. Pro rata entitlement at month eight is 28 multiplied by 8 over 12, giving 18.67 days, rounded up to 19. Subtract 12 taken, leaving 7 owed. Day rate is £36,000 divided by 260 working days, or about £138.46. Final payout for outstanding holiday is roughly £969.22 before tax.
The opposite can also happen. If you have taken more holiday than you have accrued by the time you leave, your employer can deduct the excess from your final pay, but only if the employment contract explicitly allows it. Check any clawback clause before booking a large block of leave close to a planned resignation. If there is no such clause, the employer cannot legally recoup the overpayment.
Workers on notice periods continue to accrue leave up to the final day of employment, and any time off taken during the notice period counts against either the accrued balance or the notice pay, depending on how the contract treats it. Garden leave arrangements also count towards holiday accrual, so if your employer sends you home on full pay for three months, those three months still build up leave in the normal way.