Almost every worker in the UK is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. If you work 5 days a week, that’s 28 days. Part-time workers get the same 5.6 weeks, so multiply the days you work each week by 5.6: 4 days a week gives 22.4 days and 3 days gives 16.8. The legal maximum is 28 days, and your employer can count bank holidays as part of it. If your hours change from one pay period to the next, you build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours you work instead.
Those are the statutory minimums. Your contract can give you more, but never less. Below I go through each type of working pattern with GOV.UK’s own worked examples, then cover starting or leaving a job part-way through the year, bank holidays and holiday pay. If you’d rather skip the sums, my free UK holiday entitlement calculator handles every case in this guide and shows its working. I tested it against all 19 examples in GOV.UK’s guidance on 8 October 2026.
The right to paid holiday comes from the Working Time Regulations 1998. It covers almost everyone classed as a worker, not just employees. GOV.UK’s holiday entitlement guide names agency workers, irregular-hours workers and part-year workers specifically.
The entitlement is set in weeks, not days, which is what makes it fair for part-time staff. A “week” of holiday is a week of your normal working pattern. For someone on a standard 5-day week, 5.6 weeks × 5 days = 28 days.
There’s a cap, though. Statutory paid holiday is limited to 28 days. Someone who works 6 days a week would get 33.6 days on the 5.6-week formula, but the law gives them 28. Their employer can offer more, and plenty do.
Many contracts are more generous than the minimum, for example 25 days plus bank holidays (33 in total in England and Wales in 2026). Extra leave above 5.6 weeks doesn’t have to follow all the statutory rules. An employer can, for instance, make you work there for a set time before you earn it.
If you work the same number of days every week, your statutory entitlement is the lower of 28 days or 5.6 × your days per week. Here’s the full list:
GOV.UK’s guidance uses the example of Andrew, who works 4 days a week. His entitlement is 5.6 × 4 = 22.4 days, because that’s below the cap.
If you work set hours each week but your days vary, it’s fairer to count your holiday in hours. Work out the days first, then multiply by your average working day.
Take Irene from GOV.UK’s guidance. She works 30 hours over 4 days: 9 hours on Monday and Wednesday, 6 hours on Tuesday and Thursday.
When she books a Monday off, 9 hours come off her total. A Tuesday costs 6. This is also the approach for compressed hours, such as a full-time week squeezed into 4 longer days.
Shift patterns often don’t line up with a calendar week, for example 4 on, 4 off. GOV.UK suggests working out your average shifts per week first: (shifts in the pattern ÷ days in the pattern) × 7. Then multiply by 5.6, up to a maximum of 28 shifts.
GOV.UK’s example is Yolanda, who works 5 shifts every 8 days:
This works when your shifts are all the same length. If they aren’t, use the hours method above instead.
If the number of hours you work changes from one pay period to the next (zero-hours, casual, bank or agency work) or you only work part of the year, for example term-time only, a different rule applies. For leave years that started on or after 1 April 2024, you build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours you actually work in each pay period.
The odd-looking figure comes straight from the 5.6 weeks. A year has 52 weeks; take away 5.6 weeks of holiday and 46.4 weeks are left for work. 5.6 ÷ 46.4 = 12.07%. GOV.UK sets this out in its guide to the holiday pay reforms from 1 January 2024.
Here’s GOV.UK’s example. If you work 30 hours in a weekly pay period, you earn 30 × 12.07% = 3.621 hours of holiday. GOV.UK rounds that to the nearest hour (0.5 rounds up), so you get 4 hours, which you can take from your next pay period. It’s still capped at 5.6 weeks a year.
For these workers only, employers can choose to pay rolled-up holiday pay instead. That means adding 12.07% to your pay every pay period, rather than paying you when you take time off. On £375 for a week’s work, that’s an extra £45.26. It should show as a separate line on your payslip. You still need to take the time off, but it’s unpaid when you do, because you’ve already been paid for it.
Your leave year is usually set in your contract, for example 1 January to 31 December or 1 April to 31 March. If your contract doesn’t say, it starts on your first day in the job.
When you start part-way through a leave year, you get a share of the full entitlement for the part that’s left. In your first year, your leave builds up at one-twelfth of your yearly entitlement at the start of each month in the job. For a full-time worker on 28 days, that’s 2.33 days a month. If the total has a fraction of a day, round it up to the next half or whole day.
GOV.UK’s Charlie starts on 2 September, working 5 days a week, and his leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March. He starts work in 7 months of that leave year (2 September, 2 October and so on, up to 2 March):
GOV.UK’s guide to calculating leave entitlement also allows employers to pro-rate the first month by days worked instead. Check your contract to see which method yours uses.
When you leave, your entitlement for that leave year is pro-rated by the calendar days you were employed, not the days you actually worked. Your employer must then pay you for any statutory leave you’ve built up but not taken. This is the only time you can be paid instead of taking statutory leave, and it applies even if you’re dismissed for gross misconduct.
GOV.UK’s guide to holiday entitlement on different contracts has an example. Mary works 45 hours over 4 days, her leave year started on 1 April 2019 and she left on 25 July 2019:
If Mary had already taken 40 hours off, she’d be owed pay for the other 39.9. If she’d taken more than she built up, her employer could only take the extra back from her final pay if they’d agreed that with her in writing beforehand.
The same formula works for short contracts. Gen does a 10-week summer internship from 3 June to 9 August, 5 days a week. That’s 68 days out of 365, so 28 × 68 ÷ 365 = 5.22 days of paid holiday.
If you’re leaving because of redundancy, your holiday pay sits alongside your redundancy pay and notice pay, and all three should appear on your final payslip or written statement.
They can. Bank holidays don’t have to be given as paid leave, and your employer can choose to include them in your 5.6 weeks of statutory leave. That’s why many full-time contracts say “20 days plus bank holidays”: 20 + 8 = 28, the legal minimum in England and Wales.
The number of bank holidays depends on where you work. According to GOV.UK’s bank holiday list, 2026 has:
Part-time workers sometimes lose out when bank holidays fall on days they don’t work. If your employer counts bank holidays in your statutory leave, make sure your total still adds up to 5.6 weeks of your working pattern, whatever days the bank holidays fall on.
You’re entitled to a week’s pay for each week of statutory leave you take. For regular hours and fixed pay, that’s simply your normal pay for a week. For shift work with regular hours, or irregular hours, it’s based on your average pay over the previous 52 weeks in which you were paid. Weeks with no pay are skipped, counting back up to 104 weeks.
GOV.UK’s holiday pay guidance also splits the 5.6 weeks for regular-hours workers. At least 4 weeks must be paid at your normal rate, which includes commission, regular overtime and payments linked to length of service or qualifications, but usually not bonuses. The other 1.6 weeks can be paid at a basic rate. Irregular-hours and part-year workers must get all their leave at the normal rate.
There’s a new record-keeping rule too. From 6 April 2026, employers must keep detailed records of annual leave and holiday pay for at least 6 years, and can be fined if they can’t show them. If you ever need to check what you were paid, ask for those records.
Unless your contract says otherwise, you should give notice of at least twice the length of the leave plus one day. That’s 3 days’ notice for 1 day off, or 11 days for a week. Your employer can refuse a request or cancel leave with the same amount of notice as the leave itself plus a day, but they can’t stop you taking your leave at all.
If you get 28 days, you can carry over up to 8 days into the next leave year, as long as your contract allows it. If you get more than 28, your employer may let you carry over some of the extra leave.
You keep building up holiday while you’re off sick or on maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental leave. If you couldn’t take your holiday because you were sick, you can carry over up to 20 of your 28 days if you work regular hours, or up to 28 days if you work irregular hours or part of the year. You can carry over your whole entitlement if your employer didn’t give you a reasonable chance to take it, or didn’t tell you that you’d lose it.
These are the errors I see most often in contracts and payslips:
22.4 days a year: 5.6 weeks × 4 days. If your days are different lengths, multiply 22.4 by your average working day to get hours, for example 22.4 × 7.5 hours = 168 hours.
16.8 days a year (5.6 × 3). GOV.UK uses this exact example for part-time workers on regular hours.
In your first year, one-twelfth of your yearly entitlement at the start of each month in the job. On 28 days, that’s about 2.33 days a month, with the total rounded up to the next half or whole day.
They can. Your employer doesn’t have to give bank holidays as paid leave, and can include them in your 5.6 weeks. England and Wales have 8 bank holidays in 2026, while Scotland and Northern Ireland each have 10.
Your yearly entitlement is pro-rated by the calendar days you were employed in the leave year. Your employer must pay you for any statutory leave you’ve built up but not taken, even if you’re dismissed. If you’re being made redundant, my guide to how redundancy pay is calculated in the UK covers the rest of your final pay.
It’s how irregular-hours and part-year workers build up leave for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. You earn 12.07% of the hours you work in each pay period, so 30 hours earns 3.621 hours, rounded to 4.
Yes, as long as they give notice at least as long as the leave you asked for, plus a day. They can also tell you when to take leave, for example at Christmas, but they can’t stop you taking your entitlement altogether.
If you get 28 days, you can carry over up to 8 days if your contract allows it. Different rules apply when you couldn’t take leave because of sickness or family leave.
Holiday entitlement looks complicated because there are so many working patterns, but it always comes back to the same idea: 5.6 weeks of whatever your normal working week is, capped at 28 days, and pro-rated if you’re only there for part of the year. Put your own pattern and dates into the calculator from the top of this guide and it’ll show every step. You can read how I built it and what it covers on the holiday entitlement calculator project page.
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