UK holiday entitlement calculator

1. Everyone gets 5.6 weeks, of their own week

The Working Time Regulations give almost every worker 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave. It is 5.6 weeks of their working week, not a share of somebody else's. A five-day week gives 28 days. A three-day week gives 16.8. A four-day week gives 22.4. The familiar 28 is simply what 5.6 weeks looks like for full-time staff, and it doubles as the statutory ceiling: someone working six or seven days a week still only has to be given 28 days.

2. Irregular hours accrue at 12.07%

For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers build up leave at 12.07% of the hours they actually work, calculated at the end of each pay period. The figure is not arbitrary: 5.6 weeks of leave divided by the 46.4 working weeks left in the year is 12.07%. Thirty hours worked earns 3.62 hours of leave, rounded to 4.

This replaced the older approach of giving casual staff a flat 5.6 weeks whatever they worked, which the Supreme Court dealt with in Harpur Trust v Brazel. If your handbook still says term-time staff get 28 days, it is describing a rule that no longer applies to leave years starting after that date.

3. Bank holidays are a contract question, not a legal one

There is no statutory right to a bank holiday off, and no right to extra pay for working one. An employer can count the eight bank holidays in England and Wales inside the 5.6 weeks, leaving 20 days to book freely, or give them on top of the full entitlement. Both are lawful. Only one of them is in your contract, and staff will assume the more generous one unless it says otherwise.

4. The 5.6 weeks is really 4 + 1.6

Statutory leave splits into 4 weeks of regulation 13 leave and 1.6 weeks of regulation 13A leave, and they behave differently. The 1.6 weeks can be carried into the next leave year by written agreement. The 4 weeks normally cannot, unless the person was prevented from taking it by sickness or family leave, or the employer never gave them a genuine opportunity. Regulation 13 leave is also the part that has to be paid at normal pay, including regular overtime and commission, rather than basic pay alone.

A worked example

Take a bar with a leave year running 1 April to 31 March. A supervisor works four days a week and started on 1 October, and the contract counts bank holidays inside the entitlement.

• Full year: 4 days × 5.6 weeks = 22.4 days.
• Employed 182 of 365 days, so pro-rata: 22.4 × 182 ÷ 365 = 11.17 days.
• Bank holidays falling in that half-year come out of it, leaving the rest to book.
• If they leave in February with 3 days untaken, those 3 days are paid at a week's pay divided by four.

A kitchen porter at the same site on zero hours is on an entirely different calculation: 12.07% of every hour they work, added at the end of each pay period, whether that is 6 hours that week or 46.