Bank Holidays and Annual Leave UK 2025: Your Full Entitlement Explained

Annual leave and bank holidays are two things most UK employees assume they understand, until a dispute arises and it becomes clear that the rules are more nuanced than they appeared. A common source of confusion is whether bank holidays are included in your statutory 28-day entitlement or given on top of it. The answer is that it depends on what your contract says, and UK law gives your employer more flexibility on this point than many workers realise.

This guide explains exactly how annual leave and bank holiday entitlement works in the UK for 2025, covering full-time employees, part-time workers, zero-hours contract workers, and what happens to unused holiday when you leave your job. Use our holiday entitlement calculator to work out your exact entitlement based on your working pattern.

Statutory holiday entitlement: the 28-day rule

Full-time employees who work five days a week are entitled to a minimum of 28 days paid holiday per year under the Working Time Regulations 1998. This is the statutory floor and employers cannot give you less. The 28-day entitlement is expressed in days for full-time workers and converted pro-rata to hours or days for part-time workers based on the number of days they work each week.

The critical point that many employees misunderstand is that the 28 days can include bank holidays. There is no legal requirement for employers to give bank holidays on top of the 28-day minimum. An employer who gives you 20 days holiday plus eight bank holidays is meeting their statutory obligation. An employer who gives you 28 days with bank holidays counted within that total is also meeting their statutory obligation, provided the eight UK bank holidays do not reduce your available leave below 28 days total.

Whether your employer includes bank holidays within your 28-day entitlement or gives them on top depends entirely on your employment contract. Many employers give 20 or more days plus bank holidays as a matter of company policy rather than legal obligation, because it is more attractive to employees. But there is no law requiring this specific structure.

Bank holidays in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

England and Wales have eight permanent bank holidays each year. Scotland has nine, with an additional bank holiday and some differences in which days are designated. Northern Ireland has ten bank holidays, including St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne. The dates matter for working out your entitlement if you are employed across different parts of the UK or your employer's contracts specify particular bank holidays.

There is no automatic right to time off on a bank holiday unless your contract says so. If your employer's business operates on bank holidays and your contract says you may be required to work, your employer can ask you to work. What they must do is give you holiday entitlement equivalent to the bank holiday either as additional leave on another day or include the bank holiday within your annual leave entitlement depending on how your contract is structured.

Part-time worker holiday rights

Part-time workers are entitled to the same holiday entitlement as full-time workers on a pro-rata basis. If a full-time worker gets 28 days, someone working three days per week gets 28 times three fifths, which equals 16.8 days. This principle of pro-rata entitlement applies to bank holidays too, which is where it gets complicated.

If bank holidays fall on days that a part-time worker does not normally work, they do not automatically lose holiday entitlement as a result. The part-time worker rights legislation means that part-time workers should not be treated less favourably than comparable full-time workers on a pro-rata basis. A worker who never works Mondays cannot be disadvantaged by bank holidays that always fall on Mondays compared to a full-time colleague who gets those days off automatically.

The practical solution is for employers to give part-time workers a pro-rata share of total holiday including bank holidays and allow the employee to take it flexibly regardless of which days they normally work. For workers on compressed hours or unusual patterns, it is worth checking with your employer how bank holidays in your specific pattern are handled, as the calculation can require careful consideration.

Holiday entitlement for zero-hours and irregular workers

Zero-hours contract workers and those with irregular working hours accrue holiday based on the hours they actually work. The rate of accrual changed on 1 April 2024 following reforms to the Working Time Regulations. Workers with irregular hours now accrue holiday at 12.07% of hours worked in each pay period during the first 52 weeks of employment. After 52 weeks, a 52-week reference period is used to calculate average weekly working time for holiday purposes.

Rolled-up holiday pay, where an additional percentage is added to hourly pay instead of workers receiving paid leave separately, was previously considered unlawful but was reinstated as a legitimate option for irregular hours workers in the same 2024 reforms. However, rolled-up pay must be clearly labelled as holiday pay on payslips and separately identified from basic pay. Workers who are not on rolled-up arrangements accrue leave as they work and must be allowed to take it.

When you leave a job: unused holiday pay

If you have accrued holiday that you have not taken when you leave a job, your employer must pay you for it. This applies whether you resign, are made redundant, or are dismissed. Holiday pay on termination is calculated based on your accrual up to your last day of employment, minus any leave you have already taken in that holiday year.

The rate of pay for holiday pay on termination should reflect your normal pay including regular overtime and commission where these form part of normal remuneration. A series of Supreme Court and Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions over recent years have established that pay for annual leave must reflect what the employee normally earns, not just their basic contractual rate, when they regularly work overtime or receive commission.

Taking holiday during sick leave and redundancy

Holiday continues to accrue during sick leave. Workers who have been off sick for a long period and have been unable to take their holiday entitlement as a result can carry over up to four weeks of untaken leave into the next holiday year. This carry over is specifically for the four weeks of EU-derived leave and not the additional 1.6 weeks of UK-only leave, though employer policy may be more generous.

If you are made redundant, your accrued but untaken holiday must be included in your final payment. Our redundancy pay calculator covers statutory redundancy pay, and your total redundancy package will also include this holiday pay element. If you are comparing the UK approach to maternity leave and holiday rights with what European workers get, our EU maternity leave tool and EU notice period comparison provide a cross-European view.