annual leave entitlement in uk: Your quick guide

In the UK, the law is pretty clear: most workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday each year.

If you work a standard five-day week, that works out to a minimum of 28 days of paid time off. This can include bank holidays, but we'll get into that a bit later.

Understanding Your Core Holiday Entitlement

Navigating the rules around paid time off can sometimes feel like a maze, but the basic principle is refreshingly simple. Think of your annual leave as a 'yearly rest fund' that your employer is legally required to provide.

This isn't just a nice-to-have perk; it's a fundamental right for nearly all workers, not just permanent employees. It’s there to make sure everyone gets a proper chance to rest and recharge away from their job, preventing burnout and helping maintain a healthy work-life balance.

The 5.6 Weeks Rule Explained

That figure of 5.6 weeks is the absolute cornerstone of the UK's holiday system. It’s the statutory legal minimum, designed to ensure fairness no matter what kind of contract you're on.

The calculation is straightforward: 5 working days per week multiplied by 5.6 weeks equals 28 days. This is the non-negotiable floor an employer must provide. Of course, many companies offer more generous leave as part of their benefits package, which is often called 'contractual leave'.

This paid time off is a significant part of your total compensation package, so it’s well worth understanding exactly what you’re entitled to.

To give you a clearer picture, here’s a quick breakdown.

Statutory Annual Leave Entitlement At a Glance

This table shows the minimum paid holiday entitlement based on the number of days someone works each week.

Days Worked Per Week	Minimum Leave in Weeks	Minimum Leave in Days
5	5.6	28
4	5.6	22.4
3	5.6	16.8
2	5.6	11.2
1	5.6	5.6

As you can see, the 5.6 weeks are the constant factor, ensuring the entitlement is scaled fairly for part-time workers.

How Bank Holidays Fit In

This is where things can get a little confusing for people. Do bank holidays count towards your 28 days? The short answer is: they can.

An employer is perfectly within their rights to include the standard bank and public holidays as part of your statutory leave.

For instance, with eight bank holidays in a typical year, your employer might set out your entitlement like this:

• 20 days of annual leave for you to book whenever you like.
• Plus 8 days which are fixed for the bank holidays.

This still adds up to the legal minimum of 28 days. The definitive guide here is your employment contract—it must clearly state whether your holiday entitlement includes bank holidays or is on top of them. Always check your contract to be sure.

If you want an even deeper dive into the official rules, you can read our clear guide to GOV.UK holiday entitlement.

The key takeaway is that an employer has the flexibility to include bank holidays within the statutory 5.6 weeks, but they cannot provide less than this total amount of paid time off.

This setup gives businesses the operational freedom to close on public holidays while ensuring employees still get their full, legally-mandated rest period. It's a system built on a defined minimum standard, with the flexibility for employers to offer more as a competitive benefit.

How Holiday Leave Is Earned and Taken

Your annual leave doesn't just land in your lap on day one. It's something you build up over time, a bit like a "pay-as-you-go" phone plan where you add credit as you go along. The same idea applies to your holiday entitlement.

This gradual earning process is called holiday accrual. From your very first day on the job, your holiday allowance starts to accumulate. For a typical full-time employee, this works out at a steady rate of 1/12th of their total annual entitlement each month.

It’s a system designed for fairness, especially when someone joins or leaves the company part-way through the year. It simply means you're entitled to the holiday you’ve actually earned up to that point.

The Mechanics of Holiday Accrual

Getting your head around accrual is pretty straightforward once you see it in action. If you get the statutory minimum of 28 days a year, you earn a slice of that each month you work.

• The calculation: 28 days ÷ 12 months = 2.33 days earned per month.

So, after three months in a new role, a full-time employee will have "banked" roughly seven days of holiday they can book. This system neatly prevents a situation where someone could take their entire year's leave in their first month and then hand in their notice.

Holiday accrual is a continuous process that ensures your paid leave entitlement directly reflects the amount of time you have worked within the leave year. It's a system designed to be fair to both the employee and the employer.

This is particularly important during the first year of employment. The law actually gives employers the green light to operate a system where new starters can only take the amount of leave they have accrued so far.

Requesting and Taking Your Earned Leave

Once you’ve built up some holiday time, there are a few rules of engagement for booking it off. You can't just decide not to show up tomorrow. There's a formal process involving notice periods, which helps businesses manage staffing and plan ahead.

The general rule of thumb for giving notice is simple: you need to give notice that is at least twice as long as the leave you want to take.

• Example 1: For a one-day holiday, you’ll need to give at least two days' notice.
• Example 2: For a two-week holiday (which is 10 working days), you must provide at least 20 working days' notice (that's four weeks).

This works both ways. An employer also has to give a minimum amount of notice if they have to turn down a holiday request. The notice they provide must be equal to the length of the leave you asked for. So, if you booked a week off, they have to let you know at least a week before it was due to start. As always, though, check your employment contract, as it might set out different notice periods.

Calculating Leave for Part-Time and Irregular Hours

While the 5.6-week rule is a solid foundation, things get a bit more complex when you move away from standard full-time contracts. Calculating annual leave for part-time, casual, or zero-hours staff means shifting your thinking from counting days to calculating hours. This ensures everyone gets the fair, proportional holiday they're entitled to.

This is often where managers and HR teams feel a flicker of uncertainty, but the maths is more straightforward than it appears. The key is to ditch the one-size-fits-all "days off" mindset and adopt a flexible, pro-rata system that mirrors the actual time an employee works.

This infographic gives a simple overview of a common process in leave management—the holiday request decision tree.

This flowchart shows the basic approval or denial path, which is really the final step after you've correctly calculated an employee's entitlement and they've accrued enough leave to take.

Calculating for Part-Time Staff with Regular Hours

Let's start with the most common scenario: a part-time employee who works a fixed number of days each week. The principle here is simple—they get the same 5.6 weeks of leave, but it's scaled to their working week.

You don't need a complicated formula. Just multiply the number of days they work each week by 5.6.

• An employee working 3 days a week gets: 3 days × 5.6 weeks = 16.8 days of paid holiday.
• An employee working 4 days a week gets: 4 days × 5.6 weeks = 22.4 days of paid holiday.

It's really important to be precise here and not round these figures down. An employee is entitled to that fraction of a day, which usually translates into a specific number of hours and minutes. For a more detailed look at these sums, it's worth reading a complete guide on how to calculate pro-rata holiday in the UK.

The Method for Irregular and Zero-Hours Workers

This is where many businesses trip up. How do you calculate holiday for someone whose hours change every single week? The answer lies in basing their entitlement on the hours they have actually worked.

For many years, the standard approach was a percentage calculation. While recent legislative changes have introduced new methods for leave years starting on or after 1st April 2024, the percentage-based accrual system is still widely used and essential for calculating leave earned in the past.

For workers with irregular hours, holiday entitlement is earned as they work. The most common approach has been to calculate holiday pay based on 12.07% of the hours worked.

This percentage isn't just a random number. It’s derived directly from the statutory leave entitlement. A year has 52 weeks. If you take away the 5.6 weeks of statutory leave, you're left with 46.4 working weeks.

The calculation is then: (5.6 weeks of holiday ÷ 46.4 working weeks) × 100 = 12.07%.

Putting the 12.07% Method into Practice

Let's see how this works with a real-world example. Imagine you have a casual worker who has logged different hours each week over a month:

• Week 1: 20 hours worked
• Week 2: 15 hours worked
• Week 3: 30 hours worked
• Week 4: 10 hours worked
• Total hours worked in the month: 75 hours

To calculate the holiday they’ve earned that month, you just apply the percentage.

75 hours × 12.07% = 9.05 hours of paid holiday earned.

This method ensures fairness and compliance. An employee's holiday pot grows in direct proportion to their work, no matter how much their hours fluctuate. It provides a clear, auditable trail that shows you are providing the correct statutory annual leave entitlement in UK law.

It is absolutely vital for employers to keep accurate records of hours worked and holiday accrued for these team members. Using a reliable system to track this automatically can save huge amounts of admin time and prevent costly mistakes, making sure every hour of leave is accounted for and paid correctly. That accuracy protects both the business and your people.

What Happens to Unused Holidays? A Guide to Carry-Over Rules

So, what happens to that precious 'yearly rest fund' you’ve been banking when the leave year ticks over? It’s a classic question, and the answer isn't always simple. The rules around carrying over unused holidays are a critical piece of the annual leave entitlement in UK law.

The starting point is pretty straightforward: paid time off is there for a reason – to rest and recharge. The law wants you to take it within the year you earn it.

But life gets in the way, doesn't it? Sickness, a massive project, or just letting the calendar get away from you can leave a surplus of days as the year-end looms. For both managers and staff, figuring out how the legal framework and your company’s own policies play together is vital. The whole point is to foster a healthy work-life balance, but there are some important exceptions to the "use it or lose it" rule.

The Official Stance on Carrying Over Leave

To get your head around the carry-over rules, you need to know that the law views your statutory 5.6 weeks of leave in two separate chunks. This split is everything.

1. The Core Four Weeks (from the EU's Working Time Directive): Think of this as the non-negotiable health and safety portion of your leave. The law is incredibly strict here. This block of leave cannot generally be carried over to the next year. You also can’t be paid for it instead of taking it, unless you’re leaving the company.

2. The Extra 1.6 Weeks (a UK-specific top-up): This is where things get more flexible. You and your employer can agree to carry these days forward. This arrangement needs to be in writing, usually spelled out in your employment contract or the company handbook.

Let's break that down. For a full-time employee with the standard 28 days of leave, the first 20 days are typically "use it or lose it". The remaining 8 days, however, could potentially be rolled into the next year if your company policy gives it the green light.

When Carrying Over Leave is a Legal Right

Sometimes, the law steps in and says an employee must be allowed to carry over their untaken leave – even those core four weeks. These exceptions are designed to protect people from losing their holiday entitlement due to circumstances completely out of their hands.

The most common scenarios you'll encounter are:

• Long-Term Sickness: If someone is on sick leave for so long that they can't realistically take their holiday during the leave year, they have the right to carry it over.
• Family Leave: Holiday entitlement keeps building up during maternity, paternity, or adoption leave. Any untaken days must be carried forward into the next year when they return.

In these situations, the law puts the employee's right to their full holiday entitlement first. It ensures that being ill or taking time for family doesn't unfairly penalise them by forcing them to forfeit their accrued rest days.

This is a massive compliance point for employers. Getting this wrong can easily lead to legal trouble. Having clear policies and communicating well when these situations arise is absolutely essential.

Company Policies and the Underuse Problem

While the law sets the minimum, many companies offer more generous carry-over policies as a perk. A common approach is to let people carry over a certain number of days, maybe up to five, as long as they're used within the first couple of months of the new leave year.

But here’s the interesting part: even with these flexible policies, a surprising number of people don't use up their full allowance. Data consistently shows that the average UK employee leaves five days of holiday untaken each year. That’s an entire working week left on the table. You can discover more insights into UK leave patterns and see how your organisation stacks up.

This trend points to a gap between policy and culture. You can have the most flexible carry-over rules or even an 'unlimited' holiday policy, but if the company culture quietly discourages people from taking time off, it's all for nothing. This is the fast track to burnout and sinking productivity, which is the exact opposite of what annual leave is for. It’s a powerful reminder for businesses to not just offer leave, but to actively encourage and normalise its use.

How Your Holiday Pay Is Calculated

Getting your time off approved is one thing, but making sure you're paid correctly for it is just as important. There's a common myth that holiday pay is simply your basic salary for the days you’re not in the office. The reality is a bit more nuanced.

UK law is crystal clear on this: your holiday pay must reflect what you would have normally earned if you'd been at work.

This whole principle is designed to stop employees from being financially worse off just for taking the rest they're legally entitled to. It ensures that a well-deserved break doesn't lead to a lighter pay packet, which could otherwise put people off from using their full annual leave entitlement in UK workplaces.

The bottom line is that your holiday pay should be a true snapshot of your regular income. For many, that means looking beyond the contracted salary and pulling in other consistent parts of their earnings.

What Counts as Normal Pay

For an employee on a fixed monthly salary with zero variables, the calculation is straightforward. They just get their normal pay. But for a huge number of workers, "normal pay" is a mix of different elements, and the law says these have to be included.

To work out a fair week's pay, you absolutely must factor in:

• Guaranteed Overtime: If your contract says you have to work overtime and your employer has to offer it, this is part of the calculation.
• Regular Voluntary Overtime: Even overtime that isn't guaranteed in your contract has to be included if you work it consistently enough for it to be considered 'normal'.
• Commission: Any payments that are directly tied to the work you do, like sales commission, must be part of the mix.
• Performance-Related Bonuses: Bonuses that are intrinsically linked to your performance and paid out on a regular basis also need to be included.

This ensures someone who regularly tops up their income through these channels gets holiday pay that reflects their typical earnings, not just their base salary.

The 52-Week Reference Period

So, how do you actually calculate this for someone whose pay packet looks different from one week to the next? This is where the holiday pay reference period comes in. For a long time, this was just 12 weeks, but it's now been extended to 52 weeks.

This change was brought in to create a much fairer average. It smooths out the seasonal peaks and troughs in earnings that could easily skew a shorter calculation period. An employer has to look back over the last 52 weeks that an employee has actually worked and been paid, then calculate the average weekly pay from that data.

The 52-week reference period is a vital mechanism for fairness. It ensures that holiday pay for workers with variable hours or fluctuating income is based on a long-term, representative average of their actual earnings.

What if there are weeks where the employee didn't work or get paid? Simple. Those weeks are skipped, and the employer has to go back further to find a full 52 paid weeks of data (up to a maximum look-back of 104 weeks). This stops any zero-earning weeks from unfairly dragging down the average. Getting this calculation right isn't just good practice; it's a non-negotiable part of UK employment law.

Holiday Entitlement During Sickness, Maternity, and Job Changes

Life has a way of throwing curveballs, and big events like sickness, maternity leave, or changing jobs can make your annual leave entitlement feel a bit murky. The standard rules seem to blur, but thankfully, UK law has your back with clear protections to keep your holiday entitlement safe.

Getting your head around these specific scenarios is a must for both employees and employers. If you're an employee, it's about knowing your rights so you don't lose out on well-deserved rest. For HR pros, it's about navigating these tricky situations with confidence, staying compliant, and keeping things fair for everyone.

Sickness and Annual Leave Accrual

Being off sick doesn’t mean your holiday entitlement clock stops ticking. This is a crucial point: an employee continues to build up their statutory holiday leave as normal throughout any period of sick leave, no matter how long it lasts.

The right to paid time off is a fundamental part of a worker's rights, and you don't just forfeit it because you're unwell. If you find yourself on long-term sick leave and can't use your holiday within the leave year, you're legally entitled to carry it over to the next one. This simple rule prevents people from being penalised for circumstances completely out of their control.

Holiday Rights During Maternity Leave

Much like sick leave, your statutory holiday entitlement continues to accrue throughout the entire period of maternity, paternity, adoption, or shared parental leave. This covers both the Ordinary and Additional leave periods.

This means that when an employee returns to work, they will have a full year's worth of holiday to take, plus any they hadn't used from the year they started their family leave.

Your employment contract continues throughout maternity leave, and that includes the right to accrue paid holiday. It's often best practice for managers to discuss with the employee how they would like to use this accrued leave, either by adding it to the end of their maternity leave or using it upon their return.

Recent trends show a notable shift in how much leave is being used. Analysis of over 3,000 UK companies reveals the average number of annual leave days taken per employee dropped from 38 in 2020 to 33.9 in 2023, a decrease of nearly 12%. Understanding how leave is protected during life events is essential to ensure employees don't lose their entitlement. You can read the full research on UK annual leave trends to see how these patterns vary.

Final Holiday Pay When You Leave a Job

When someone's time with the company comes to an end, a final holiday calculation is needed to settle the score. An employee is entitled to be paid for any statutory holiday they've accrued but not taken during that leave year.

The calculation is pretty straightforward—it’s based on the proportion of the year they've worked. For example, if someone leaves exactly halfway through the leave year, they are entitled to half of their annual holiday allowance. Any untaken days from this amount must be paid out in their final payslip. This is often called payment in lieu of holiday.

On the flip side, if an employee has taken more holiday than they have accrued by their leaving date, an employer may be able to deduct the difference from their final pay. This has to be clearly spelled out in the employment contract, though. For a deeper dive into this process, check out our comprehensive guide on holiday entitlement when leaving a job.

Annual Leave: Your Questions Answered

Even when you've got a handle on the basics of annual leave entitlement in the UK, specific questions always seem to crop up. We get it. Let's run through some of the most common queries we see, clearing up the confusion for employers and employees alike.

Getting these details right is a non-negotiable for keeping things running smoothly and, most importantly, fairly.

Can My Employer Tell Me When to Take My Holiday?

In short, yes. An employer can absolutely tell you when you need to take your leave. The classic example is a company-wide shutdown over the Christmas period where everyone is required to use their holiday allowance.

But they can't just drop it on you at the last minute. The rule is clear: they must give you notice that is at least twice as long as the leave they're asking you to take. So, if they’re closing for one week, they need to give you a minimum of two weeks' notice.

What’s the Difference Between Statutory and Contractual Leave?

This is a really important one to get your head around, as it affects your rights. Think of it like this: you have a baseline legal entitlement, and then you might have some extra on top.

• Statutory Leave: This is the legal minimum that everyone in the UK is entitled to, which works out to 5.6 weeks a year. The rules for this chunk of leave are set down in law and can't be changed by your employer.
• Contractual Leave: This is any extra holiday your employer decides to give you on top of that legal minimum. The rules for this additional leave—like how much you can carry over—are determined by your employment contract, not the law.

Always give your contract a thorough read to see what rules apply to any holiday you get above that statutory baseline.

Can I Get Paid for My Holiday Instead of Taking It?

For your statutory 5.6 weeks, the answer is almost always no. The practice of paying you for holiday you haven't taken is called 'payment in lieu', and it's not allowed for your statutory entitlement.

The whole point of the law is to make sure you get a proper rest and a break from work—not just a bit of extra cash. Payment in lieu of statutory holiday is only permitted when your employment is ending.

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