Holiday Entitlement Calculator UK

How to use this calculator

1. Pick the pattern that matches your contractFixed days is right for most part-time workers. Fixed hours suits shift patterns where days vary but weekly hours do not. Irregular is for zero-hours, casual and term-time-only work.
2. Enter days worked, not days availableSomeone contracted for three days a week enters 3, regardless of how the business operates the rest of the week.
3. Use months into the leave year for accrualEntitlement accrues through the year. Twelve months gives the full annual figure; anything less pro-rates it.
4. Say whether bank holidays are includedThis does not change your statutory entitlement, but it changes how much discretionary leave you actually get to choose. The calculator shows both.

Why the entitlement is in weeks, and why the cap bites

The Working Time Regulations set the minimum at 5.6 weeks rather than a number of days, and that phrasing does a lot of work.

A week means a working week for the individual. Someone working five days a week has a five-day week, so 5.6 weeks is 28 days. Someone working three days a week has a three-day week, so 5.6 weeks is 16.8 days. Both get the same amount of time off relative to their working pattern, which is the point.

This is why comparing raw day counts between colleagues is misleading. A part-timer with 16.8 days and a full-timer with 28 days have identical entitlements.

The 28-day cap is where it stops scaling. Someone working six days a week would get 33.6 days by the formula, but the statutory maximum is 28. So above five working days a week the entitlement stops increasing, and a six-day worker is proportionally worse off than a five-day one.

The cap is a statutory maximum on the minimum, not a maximum on what you can be given. Many employers offer 25 days plus bank holidays, which is 33 days and comfortably above the floor.

One consequence people find counter-intuitive: if you work five days a week and your employer counts the eight bank holidays within your 28 days, you have only 20 days you can actually choose. That is lawful. The statutory entitlement is 28 days of paid leave, and nothing requires any of it to be at a time you pick.

Worked example: four days a week, eight months in

Four working days a week × 5.6 weeks = 22.4 days for a full leave year. That is below the 28-day cap, so no capping applies.

Eight months into the leave year: 22.4 × 8 ÷ 12 = 14.93 days accrued.

Less five days already taken: 9.93 days remain.

Notice that the accrued figure is not a round number, and it should not be rounded down. Entitlement may be rounded up to the nearest half day but not down — rounding down reduces a statutory entitlement, which an employer cannot do.

Now compare with a colleague working five days a week. Their full entitlement is 28 days, accruing to 18.67 by month eight. The four-day worker has 80% of the days, which is exactly right, because they work 80% of the week.

If the employer counts eight bank holidays within the entitlement, the four-day worker's discretionary leave drops to 22.4 − 8 = 14.4 days for the year. Though in practice a four-day worker only encounters bank holidays that fall on their working days, which is roughly 80% of them — this is an area where employers commonly get the pro-rating wrong and part-timers lose out.

Entitlement by working pattern

The one-day-a-week row shows why bank holiday pro-rating matters. Eight bank holidays exceed a 5.6-day entitlement entirely, so an employer counting all eight against a one-day worker would leave them with negative leave — which cannot be right. The correct approach is to pro-rate bank holidays to the working pattern, and employers who apply a flat deduction are underpaying part-time staff.

Irregular hours, carry-over and payment in lieu

Irregular-hours and part-year workers were the subject of a significant reform after the Supreme Court decision in Harpur Trust v Brazel, which held that term-time workers were entitled to the full 5.6 weeks rather than a pro-rated share.

The response was to introduce an accrual method for these workers: holiday accrues at 12.07% of hours worked in each pay period. That figure is not arbitrary — 5.6 weeks of leave out of a 46.4-week working year gives 5.6 ÷ 46.4 = 12.07%.

Rolled-up holiday pay, where an uplift is added to each pay packet instead of paid when leave is taken, was reintroduced as an option for irregular-hours and part-year workers under the same reforms. It remains unlawful for regular workers, and it must be itemised separately on the payslip where it is used.

Carry-over is limited. The first four weeks of the entitlement derive from EU-retained law and can be carried over only in specific circumstances — most commonly where sickness or family leave prevented the worker from taking it, or where the employer failed to give a reasonable opportunity to take it. The remaining 1.6 weeks may be carried over by agreement.

Payment in lieu of untaken statutory leave is unlawful during employment. The entitlement exists for rest, and buying it out defeats that. The only exception is on termination, where accrued and untaken leave must be paid out.

Holiday pay itself must reflect normal remuneration, not just basic pay. Regular overtime, commission and shift premiums that form part of normal pay should be included in the calculation for at least the first four weeks. Employers paying basic-only holiday pay to staff who regularly work paid overtime are underpaying.

Assumptions and limitations

• Calculates the statutory minimum — contracts frequently give more
• Assumes a consistent working pattern across the leave year
• Does not pro-rate bank holidays to the working pattern, which employers should do
• Does not calculate the monetary value of holiday pay, which must reflect normal remuneration
• Does not model carry-over rules, which differ between the first four weeks and the remaining 1.6
• Does not handle leavers' final-pay calculations, which use days worked in the leave year
• Not legal advice — for a dispute, ACAS or an employment adviser is the route

Questions people ask about this in United Kingdom