Holiday Entitlement Guides
Practical guides to UK annual leave, bank holidays, and pro-rata entitlement.
Almost every dispute about annual leave comes down to the same thing: statutory entitlement in the UK is defined in weeks, not days. Workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid leave a year, and what that converts to in days depends entirely on how many days a week you work. Someone working five days gets 28 days. Someone working three gets 16.8. The underlying entitlement is identical.
That single fact resolves most of the confusion around part-time workers being treated unfairly, because it means a part-timer is not entitled to fewer weeks off, only to fewer days that make up those weeks. It also explains why the arithmetic gets awkward: entitlement rarely lands on a whole number, and employers handle the remainder inconsistently.
Bank holidays are the second recurring source of disagreement. There is no automatic legal right to take them off or to be paid extra for working them. Employers may include them within the 5.6 weeks or grant them on top, and which applies to you is a matter of your contract rather than the law.
All guides
Bank Holidays and Annual Leave: What You're Actually Entitled To
Whether your employer can count bank holidays toward your statutory entitlement, and what the rules say about extra bank holiday pay.
UK Holiday Entitlement Rules: A Plain-English Guide
How 5.6 weeks statutory annual leave works, what counts as a holiday, and your rights when you leave a job mid-year.
Pro-Rata Holiday Entitlement Explained
How to calculate pro-rata leave for part-year starters, leavers, and part-time workers — with worked examples.
Accrued Holiday Calculator UK: How to Work Out Your Leave as You Earn It
The UK accrual formula explained — with worked examples for full-time, part-time, mid-year starters, and zero-hours workers.
Using these with the calculators
Read the guide that matches your circumstances, then run your own figures through the calculators. If you started or left partway through the leave year, or your hours have changed, the pro-rata and accrual guides are the ones that will resolve most questions.
Where your own calculation and your employer's disagree, the cause is usually one of three things: whether bank holidays are counted inside or on top of the entitlement, how part days have been rounded, or which date the leave year actually starts. Check those three before assuming an error.
This is general information rather than legal advice. Statutory entitlement is a floor, and your contract may give you more. If you believe you are being denied the legal minimum, ACAS provides free impartial guidance and is the appropriate first step.
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