Holiday Entitlement Calculator (UK Statutory)

Holiday Entitlement Guide (UK)

What should I know about The 5.6 Weeks Statutory Minimum?

Almost all UK workers are legally entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks' paid holiday per year — this is the statutory minimum under the Working Time Regulations. For someone working five days a week, 5.6 weeks equals 28 days (5 × 5.6), which is why 28 days is the familiar figure. Importantly, 28 days is also the cap on the statutory entitlement: even if you work six or seven days a week, your statutory minimum is capped at 28 days (though your employer can choose to give more). The entitlement is expressed in weeks precisely so it scales fairly across different working patterns — 5.6 weeks of your normal working week, whatever that is. Employers can offer more than the statutory minimum as a contractual benefit, and many do (for example 25 days plus bank holidays). The 5.6 weeks can include bank holidays or not, depending on your contract — there's no separate legal right to paid time off on bank holidays, so whether they're 'on top' of your holiday or counted within it depends on your employer. This calculator works out your statutory minimum entitlement based on your working pattern; check your contract for anything more generous your employer provides.

What should I know about Part-Time and Pro-Rata?

Part-time workers are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks of holiday as full-time workers — but because a 'week' is shorter for them, this works out as fewer days, calculated pro-rata. The principle is that part-timers shouldn't be treated less favourably: they get 5.6 weeks of their working week. For someone working three days a week, 5.6 weeks equals 16.8 days (3 × 5.6). For someone working four days, it's 22.4 days. The 28-day cap still applies but rarely bites for part-timers. Where holiday works out as a fraction of a day, employers usually round up (rounding down would reduce the statutory entitlement, which isn't allowed) or handle the part-day in hours. For workers with fixed hours rather than fixed days, entitlement can be calculated in hours: 5.6 × weekly hours gives the annual holiday hours. Bank holidays can complicate part-time calculations, since bank holidays fall on particular weekdays — part-timers who don't work those days could otherwise lose out or gain unfairly, so many employers pro-rata bank holiday entitlement across all working days to keep it fair. If you start or leave a job partway through the holiday year, your entitlement is pro-rated for the portion of the year you work. This calculator handles the main fixed-days and fixed-hours cases.

What should I know about Irregular Hours and the 12.07% Rule?

For workers with irregular hours — zero-hours contracts, casual workers, and those whose hours vary week to week — holiday is often calculated using accrual at 12.07% of hours worked. This figure comes directly from the statutory entitlement: 5.6 weeks of holiday out of the 46.4 working weeks in a year (52 minus 5.6) equals 12.07%. So for every hour worked, an irregular-hours worker accrues 0.1207 hours (about 7.25 minutes) of paid holiday. Over time this builds up to the equivalent of 5.6 weeks. Following reforms that took effect for holiday years from April 2024, this accrual method was formally established for irregular-hours and part-year workers, and 'rolled-up' holiday pay (paying an extra 12.07% on top of each pay packet instead of paid time off) became lawful again for these workers, provided it's clearly itemised on payslips. This resolved years of legal uncertainty. So if you work irregular hours, your holiday entitlement grows with the hours you actually work, at 12.07%, and may be paid either as time off or as a rolled-up addition to your pay. This calculator applies the 12.07% accrual to the hours you enter. The rules here have been complex and subject to legal change, so check current GOV.UK guidance for your specific arrangement.

What should I know about Your Holiday Rights?

Beyond the headline entitlement, several rights and rules are worth knowing. Holiday pay: you must be paid your normal pay for holiday — for those with variable pay (commission, regular overtime, irregular hours), holiday pay should reflect average earnings, not just basic pay, following various court rulings. Carrying over: generally you should take your statutory holiday within the leave year, but some can be carried over in specific circumstances (such as sickness or family leave preventing you taking it). Your employer can require you to take holiday at certain times (for example a Christmas shutdown) or restrict when you take it, with proper notice. Payment in lieu: you can't normally be paid instead of taking your statutory holiday while employed (the point is rest), except when you leave a job, where you're paid for any accrued but untaken holiday. Starting and leaving: entitlement is pro-rated for partial years, and on leaving you're owed pay for holiday accrued but not taken. Bank holidays: as noted, there's no automatic legal right to them off or to extra pay for working them — it depends on your contract. If you think you're not getting your correct holiday or holiday pay, raise it with your employer, and if unresolved, ACAS and Citizens Advice can advise. This calculator estimates your statutory minimum; your contract may give more, and the detailed rules (especially for irregular hours and holiday pay calculation) can be intricate, so check GOV.UK or seek advice for anything complex or disputed.

Worked Example: Converting Entitlement to Days for a 4-Day Working Week

Statutory holiday entitlement in Great Britain is set in weeks (5.6 weeks a year for a full-time worker), which deliberately keeps the entitlement fair regardless of how many days a week someone works — but it needs converting into actual days off for anyone who does not work a standard 5-day week.

The important detail in the last row is the statutory cap: even though 5.6 weeks multiplied by 6 days would give 33.6 days, the legal entitlement for any worker is capped at 28 days, which is the maximum a full-time 5-day-a-week worker could reach under the formula (5.6 x 5 = 28). A 6-day-a-week worker's extra day is not owed as statutory holiday, though an employer is free to offer more generous contractual holiday above the statutory floor, and many do. Partial days (the 22.4 and 16.8 in the table) are usually rounded up in the worker's favour by employers, since asking someone to take 0.4 of a day off is impractical — most contracts round to the nearest half-day or whole day, and this rounding practice should be set out in the contract or staff handbook rather than decided case by case.

What Counts as a Week's Pay for Holiday Pay Purposes

Calculating how much someone is actually paid while on statutory holiday is not always as simple as dividing annual salary by 52, particularly for workers whose pay varies week to week. For workers with no normal working hours or whose pay varies with the amount of work done (commission-based, piece-rate, or genuinely variable-hours workers), holiday pay is based on average pay over a reference period, currently 52 weeks, looking back from the date the holiday starts, and skipping any week with no pay at all (going back further, up to 104 weeks, to find 52 weeks that do have pay). This rule exists specifically to stop employers timing holiday pay calculations around a worker's quietest weeks. For workers with fixed hours and fixed pay, holiday pay is simply their normal week's pay, unaffected by any averaging. The distinction matters most for the irregular-hours and part-year workers covered separately in this guide's 12.07% section, since the averaging method and the 12.07% accrual method are two different tools solving related but distinct problems — 12.07% estimates how much leave has accrued, while the 52-week average determines how much that leave should be paid once taken (or, for irregular-hours and part-year workers specifically, rolled-up holiday pay calculated as 12.07% of that pay period's earnings, paid alongside wages, is now a permitted alternative method under rules effective from April 2024). Getting this wrong by using a flat salary-divided-by-52 approach for a variable-hours worker is one of the more common unlawful deduction of wages claims brought to employment tribunals, because it tends to systematically underpay holiday for anyone whose hours and pay fluctuate.