Holiday Entitlement Calculator UK 2026: How Many Days Are You Owed?

Holiday entitlement calculator UK searches usually start with a nagging suspicion: that the number of days on your HR portal does not match what you are actually owed. Maybe you joined halfway through the leave year. Maybe you work three days a week and nobody explained the pro rata maths. Maybe you are on a zero hours contract and have been told, wrongly, that you get no holiday at all. Working out your statutory leave is not complicated once you know the three rules that drive it, but almost nobody explains them in plain English. This guide does. You will learn exactly how many days you are legally owed, how to pro rata it for part-time and mid-year starts, how the 12.07% rule works for irregular hours, and what to do when the number your employer gives you looks too low.

A holiday entitlement calculator UK workers can trust starts from one figure: 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave per leave year, which is the statutory minimum for almost every worker in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For a five day week that is 28 days. Part-time staff get 5.6 multiplied by their usual days per week, and irregular hours workers accrue 12.07% of the hours they actually work.

The 5.6 Week Rule Explained

UK law gives almost every worker 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave in each leave year. That includes agency workers, casual staff, zero hours workers and people on fixed-term contracts. It is a legal floor, not a target, and no contract can reduce it.

The word doing the heavy lifting is “weeks”, not “days”. Your entitlement is measured in your working weeks, then converted into days or hours depending on how you work. That single detail is why a part-time worker and a full-time worker both get 5.6 weeks, yet very different day counts.

There is one cap. Statutory entitlement stops at 28 days even if you work six or seven days a week. Someone working a six day week does not get 33.6 days by law, though plenty of employers choose to be more generous.

The 5.6 weeks is actually made up of two separate pots created by different pieces of law: 4 weeks derived from the Working Time Directive, plus 1.6 weeks of additional UK leave. That distinction rarely matters for entitlement, but it matters a lot for how the leave is paid, which we cover in the companion guide to how holiday pay is calculated in the UK.

Full-Time Holiday Entitlement

If you work five days a week, your statutory entitlement is 5.6 × 5 = 28 days. This is the figure most UK job adverts refer to when they say “28 days holiday including bank holidays”.

Many employers offer more. A common UK package is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays, which comes to 33 days and comfortably clears the statutory floor. Public sector and larger private employers often add service-related days on top, typically one extra day per year of service up to a cap of around five days.

Check your contract wording carefully. “25 days plus bank holidays” and “25 days inclusive of bank holidays” are five weeks apart in real terms, and the second version would actually fall below the legal minimum.

Part-Time and Pro Rata Entitlement

Part-time workers are protected by the Part-time Workers Regulations, which means you get the same 5.6 weeks, just expressed in your own working days. The maths is straightforward.

Days per week × 5.6 = your annual entitlement in days.

Employers may round up part days but must never round down, because rounding down would take you below the statutory minimum. Many payroll systems handle this by converting everything into hours instead.

If your hours vary between days, hours are usually the cleaner unit. Take your average weekly hours, multiply by 5.6, and you have your entitlement in hours. Someone averaging 22 hours a week is owed 123.2 hours of paid leave a year.

Compressed hours and shift patterns

If you work full-time hours across four longer days, you still get 5.6 weeks, which is 22.4 days of your longer days. In hours it works out identical to a five day worker. The confusion arises when bank holidays fall on your non-working day, which we cover below.

Irregular Hours, Zero Hours and Part-Year Workers

This is where most disputes happen, and where the rules changed. For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular hours workers and part-year workers accrue holiday as they go rather than receiving a full year’s allowance up front.

The rate is 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period. That percentage is not arbitrary: 5.6 weeks of leave divided by the 46.4 working weeks that remain in the year gives 12.07%.

An “irregular hours worker” is someone whose paid hours are wholly or mostly variable under their contract. A “part-year worker” is someone contracted to work only part of the year with unpaid gaps, such as a term-time only school worker.

Rounding follows a simple rule set out in the GOV.UK guidance. Part hours of less than 30 minutes round down to the nearest hour, and 30 minutes or more rounds up.

Rolled-up holiday pay

Employers of irregular hours and part-year workers may now use rolled-up holiday pay, adding at least 12.07% on top of each pay packet instead of paying leave when it is taken. Acas guidance is clear that it must be shown as a separate line on your payslip and paid in the same period the work was done. If your employer claims to roll up your holiday pay but nothing appears on the payslip, that is a red flag. Our guide to reading a UK payslip shows exactly where to look.

Important: rolled-up holiday pay does not remove your right to actually take the time off. You still accrue leave and can still book it, you simply do not get paid again at the point you take it.

Starting or Leaving Mid-Year

Join partway through a leave year and you get a pro rata slice, calculated from the proportion of the year remaining. The standard method is monthly accrual: you build up one twelfth of your annual entitlement for each month you work.

1. Find your full-year entitlement using the rules above.
2. Count the complete months from your start date to the end of the leave year.
3. Multiply the annual figure by that number of months divided by 12.
4. Round up any part days if your employer works in whole days.

Leaving works the same way in reverse. When you resign or are made redundant, you are entitled to be paid for any accrued but untaken statutory leave. If you have taken more than you had accrued, an employer can only deduct the overpayment from your final pay if your contract explicitly says so. Worth checking before you hand in your resignation letter.

Your first year of employment

In the first year of a job, some employers use an accrual system where you build up one twelfth of your entitlement at the start of each month. This is permitted, though many employers simply give you the full pro rata amount up front and trust you to use it sensibly.

Where Bank Holidays Fit In

There is no automatic legal right to paid time off on a bank holiday in the UK. This surprises a lot of people. England and Wales have 8 permanent bank holidays, Scotland has 9, and Northern Ireland has 10.

Your employer has three lawful options:

• Bank holidays included in the 28 days. The most common UK arrangement. You get 20 free-choice days plus 8 fixed bank holidays.
• Bank holidays on top. More generous, gives 28 plus 8 in England and Wales.
• Work them and take the day elsewhere. Common in retail, hospitality, care and logistics, where the business does not close.

Part-time workers must not lose out because of which days they happen to work. If your part-time colleague works Mondays and gets every bank holiday, while you work Wednesdays to Fridays and get almost none, that is a pro rata problem your employer should be fixing by giving everyone a bank holiday allowance in hours.

Worked Examples

Example 1: full-time, joined in September

Priya works five days a week and joins on 1 September. Her employer runs a leave year from 1 January to 31 December, so she has 4 complete months left. Her full-year entitlement is 28 days. Her pro rata entitlement is 28 × 4 ÷ 12 = 9.33 days, rounded up to 9.5 or 10 days depending on employer policy.

Example 2: part-time, three fixed days

Marcus works Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday all year. His entitlement is 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days, typically rounded to 17. His employer includes bank holidays in the allowance. Because most bank holidays fall on a Monday, Marcus rarely loses a day to them and keeps almost his whole 17 days for himself. His full-time colleagues effectively lose 8 of their 28.

Example 3: zero hours retail worker

Aisha is on a zero hours contract and worked 78 hours in a four-weekly pay period. Her accrual is 78 × 12.07% = 9.41 hours, which rounds down to 9 hours because the part hour is under 30 minutes. Over a year of similar periods she builds up roughly 122 hours of paid leave.

Example 4: term-time only school support worker

Tom works 30 hours a week during 39 term weeks and has unpaid gaps in the holidays, which makes him a part-year worker. He accrues 12.07% of the hours he actually works, so 30 × 39 = 1,170 hours worked, giving roughly 141 hours of paid leave. His employer typically pays this across the year rather than at the point he takes it.

Your Rights and the 2026 Record-Keeping Rules

Statutory annual leave must be paid at your normal rate of pay, cannot be replaced with a cash payment except when you leave a job, and must be given in each leave year rather than banked indefinitely.

A significant change landed on 6 April 2026. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, UK employers must now keep adequate records of annual leave and holiday pay for at least six years. Those records must show leave taken, any payments in lieu, and how the holiday pay figure was calculated. Failure to keep them is a criminal offence carrying a fine, and enforcement sits with the Fair Work Agency.

For workers, that is genuinely useful. It means if you challenge your entitlement, your employer is legally required to have the working out on file rather than relying on a manager’s memory. It also strengthens the position of irregular hours workers, whose accrual records were often the weakest part of the payroll.

The new duty does not increase statutory entitlement. It remains 5.6 weeks. It simply makes the paper trail mandatory.

What to do if your entitlement looks wrong

1. Find your leave year start date, usually in your contract or staff handbook.
2. Work out your own figure using the method above.
3. Compare it against your payslip or HR system record.
4. Ask your manager or payroll in writing for the calculation behind their number.
5. If it is still wrong, raise a formal grievance, then contact Acas, whose early conciliation service is free.

Holiday underpayment claims normally need to reach an employment tribunal within three months less one day of the deduction, so do not let a dispute drift. If you are weighing up whether the role is worth staying in at all, it is worth reading up on your wider rights in our guide to UK employment contracts.

If understanding payroll and entitlement calculations is something you would like to get properly confident with, Coffee & Study’s free Excel courses are a practical starting point for building your own tracking sheet.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Assuming bank holidays are always extra

The single most common misunderstanding. A job advert saying “28 days holiday” almost always means bank holidays are inside that figure, leaving you 20 days of genuine free choice. Always ask which arrangement applies before you accept an offer.

Believing zero hours workers get no holiday

Untrue, and unfortunately still repeated by some employers. Zero hours workers are workers, and workers get statutory annual leave. If you are on zero hours and have never been paid holiday, you may be owed a substantial back payment.

Using the old 12.07% shortcut for everyone

The 12.07% accrual method is now specifically for irregular hours and part-year workers with leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. Applying it to a part-time worker on fixed days is wrong and usually short-changes them.

Letting leave expire without checking the rules

Most employers operate a use-it-or-lose-it policy, but there are exceptions. Leave you could not take because of sickness or statutory family leave can often be carried over. If you were prevented from taking leave and were never told about your right to it, carry-over rights may be much stronger than your handbook suggests.

Not checking the pro rata sum when your hours change

If you drop from five days to three mid-year, your entitlement should be recalculated in two segments, not simply swapped to the lower figure for the whole year. Days already accrued at the higher rate stay yours.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many holiday days am I entitled to in the UK?

Almost every UK worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave per leave year. For a five day week that is 28 days, and statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days regardless of how many days a week you work. Part-time workers get the same 5.6 weeks converted into their own working days, so a three day week gives 16.8 days. Your employer can offer more but never less.

Does my 28 days include bank holidays?

It depends entirely on your contract. There is no legal right to paid bank holidays in the UK, so employers can lawfully count the 8 bank holidays inside the 28 day minimum. In practice most UK employers do exactly that, which leaves you 20 days of free choice. More generous employers give bank holidays on top. Check the exact wording in your contract, because “plus” and “inclusive of” are five weeks apart.

How do I calculate holiday entitlement for a zero hours contract?

For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, zero hours and other irregular hours workers accrue 12.07% of the hours they actually work in each pay period. Work 100 hours in a month and you accrue 12.07 hours of paid leave, rounded to 12. The percentage comes from 5.6 weeks divided by the 46.4 remaining working weeks in a year, so it delivers exactly the statutory minimum over a full year.

What happens to my unused holiday when I leave a job?

You must be paid for any statutory annual leave you have accrued but not taken by your last day. This appears in your final payslip as holiday pay. If you have taken more leave than you had accrued, your employer can only recover the difference from your final pay if there is a clear written term in your contract allowing it. Contractual leave above the statutory 5.6 weeks may be treated differently, so check your contract.

Can my employer refuse my holiday request?

Yes. Employers can refuse specific dates provided they give notice equal to the length of the leave requested, and many operate blackout periods during peak trading. What they cannot do is prevent you from taking your statutory entitlement altogether across the leave year. If requests are being refused so consistently that you cannot use your 5.6 weeks, that is a problem worth raising formally.

Do I still build up holiday while on sick leave or maternity leave?

Yes. Statutory annual leave continues to accrue throughout sickness absence, maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave. If you could not take your leave because you were off sick, you can usually carry the untaken portion into the next leave year, and in some circumstances beyond it. Many workers on long-term absence are owed considerably more leave than they realise.

Now that you know exactly what you are owed, it is worth checking whether your current employer measures up. Employers who are clear and generous about annual leave tend to be clear and fair about everything else too. Browse the latest UK jobs on UK Jobs Alert to see what is on offer, and compare the holiday package alongside the salary before you apply.