Holiday Entitlement Calculator

How UK Statutory Holiday Entitlement Works

In the United Kingdom, almost all workers are legally entitled to paid annual leave under the Working Time Regulations 1998. The statutory minimum holiday entitlement is 5.6 weeks of paid leave per year for full-time workers. For someone who works five days a week, this equates to 28 days of annual leave, which is the maximum statutory entitlement. This 28-day entitlement can include the eight public bank holidays in England and Wales, meaning an employer can require workers to take bank holidays as part of their statutory leave. Scotland has nine bank holidays and Northern Ireland has ten, but the statutory entitlement remains 5.6 weeks regardless of how many bank holidays apply in your region. Understanding your holiday entitlement is essential for planning time off and ensuring your employer provides the minimum leave required by law.

The statutory holiday entitlement applies to all workers, not just employees. This includes part-time workers, agency workers, workers on zero-hours contracts, and those with irregular working patterns. The Working Time Regulations define a worker broadly to include anyone who has a contract to perform work or services personally, provided they are not genuinely self-employed. This means that even casual workers and those on flexible contracts have a right to paid annual leave. However, the way the entitlement is calculated varies depending on the type of employment arrangement, which is why this calculator supports multiple employment types to give you an accurate result based on your specific situation.

Holiday Entitlement for Part-Time Workers

Part-time workers are entitled to pro-rata holiday based on the number of days they work per week. The formula is the same as for full-time workers: 5.6 multiplied by the number of days worked per week. For example, a worker who works three days per week is entitled to 5.6 multiplied by 3, which equals 16.8 days of annual leave. This entitlement includes any bank holidays the employer requires the worker to take. If a part-time worker is required to take bank holidays that fall on their normal working days, those days count towards their statutory entitlement. If a bank holiday falls on a day the part-time worker does not normally work, they may or may not receive an alternative day off, depending on the employer's policy and the employment contract.

Holiday Entitlement for Irregular Hours Workers

Workers with irregular hours or zero-hours contracts have their holiday entitlement calculated differently because they do not have a fixed number of working days per week. For these workers, the entitlement is calculated as 12.07% of the hours they have worked during the leave year. This percentage is derived from the fact that statutory annual leave of 5.6 weeks represents 5.6 out of 52 weeks in a year, but since workers do not work during their holiday weeks, the calculation uses 46.4 working weeks (52 minus 5.6) as the denominator: 5.6 divided by 46.4 equals approximately 12.07%. This means that for every hour an irregular worker works, they accrue approximately 7.2 minutes of paid holiday.

Example Calculations

Bank Holidays and Statutory Entitlement

A common misconception is that bank holidays are an automatic addition to the statutory 28-day leave entitlement. In fact, employers can include bank holidays within the 28-day statutory minimum. This means a full-time worker in England and Wales who receives exactly the statutory minimum of 28 days may have 8 of those days designated as bank holidays, leaving only 20 days of flexible annual leave. Some employers choose to offer bank holidays in addition to the statutory minimum as an enhanced benefit, effectively giving workers 28 days plus 8 bank holidays for a total of 36 days. The specific arrangement depends on the employment contract and company policy. Workers should always check their contract to understand whether bank holidays are included within or in addition to their statutory entitlement.

Accruing Holiday During the Leave Year

If you start a new job partway through the leave year, your holiday entitlement for that year is calculated on a pro-rata basis. For example, if the leave year runs from January to December and you start work on 1 July, you have six months remaining in the leave year and would be entitled to half of your annual entitlement. A full-time worker starting on 1 July would receive 14 days of leave for the remainder of that year. Employers may use different methods to calculate accrual, including the twelfth of a month method (where you accrue one-twelfth of your annual entitlement each month) or the actual days method. This calculator uses the monthly accrual method when a start date is provided to estimate how much leave you have accrued so far.