UK Holiday Entitlement 2025: What the Law Says and How Pay Is Calculated

Most workers in the UK know they get some paid holiday, but far fewer know exactly how much they are legally entitled to or how their holiday pay should be calculated. For people on fixed salaries working regular hours, the system is straightforward. For those working part-time, on zero-hours contracts, or with irregular pay, it is more complicated, and errors are common on both sides.

The rules changed in January 2024 for irregular hours workers, introducing a new method of calculating holiday entitlement. This guide covers the current position as it applies in 2025, including how entitlement is calculated, how bank holidays fit in, how pay is worked out for non-standard hours, and what happens to unused holiday when you leave a job. You can also use our holiday entitlement calculator to check your personal figure.

The statutory minimum: 5.6 weeks per year

Every worker (not just employees) is legally entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday per year. For someone working five days a week, this works out to 28 days. This is the legal floor; your employer can offer more, and many do, but they cannot offer less.

The 28-day figure includes bank holidays. So if your employer gives you 20 days of annual leave and designates all 8 English bank holidays as additional days on top of that, you actually have 28 days total and they are meeting the minimum. Whether bank holidays are included within your entitlement or sit on top of it depends on what your contract says. Many employment contracts specify 20 days plus bank holidays, which gives 28 or more and exceeds the statutory minimum, but the contract wording matters.

Bank holiday numbers differ across the UK. England and Wales have 8 bank holidays per year. Scotland has 9. Northern Ireland has 10. Workers in Scotland and Northern Ireland therefore have a slightly higher effective statutory minimum when bank holidays are included, though the 5.6 weeks baseline is the same everywhere.

Part-time workers: proportionate entitlement

Part-time workers are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks as full-time workers, but 5.6 weeks of their working pattern rather than 5.6 weeks of a full-time pattern. If you work three days a week, you are entitled to 5.6 x 3 = 16.8 days of holiday per year. If your employer rounds this down to 16, they are not meeting the minimum.

Part-time workers also have the right not to be treated less favourably than equivalent full-time workers when it comes to holiday, under the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000. This means that if full-time workers at your employer get 25 days plus bank holidays, you are entitled to the proportionate equivalent of that contractual entitlement, not just the statutory minimum.

Bank holidays present a practical issue for part-time workers. If your working days happen to fall on bank holidays frequently, you are at a disadvantage compared to someone who never works on bank holidays. The law does not give you an automatic right to bank holidays as additional days if they fall on days you already work, but if you consistently end up with fewer effective days off than a full-time worker, you may have a case under the equal treatment rules. Some employers address this by giving part-time workers a proportionate bank holiday entitlement regardless of which days they work.

Holiday pay: the 52-week average rule

Since April 2020, holiday pay for workers with irregular pay must be calculated as an average of earnings over the preceding 52 weeks (excluding any weeks in which no pay was received). This replaced the earlier 12-week reference period and was designed to smooth out variability for those whose pay fluctuates.

For a worker on a fixed annual salary who works the same hours every week, this calculation is simple: their holiday pay is their normal weekly pay. But for someone who works irregular hours, receives commission, earns overtime, or has their hours vary week to week, the 52-week average is the correct basis for holiday pay, not just their base hourly rate.

This is an area where errors are common. An employer paying only basic rate during holiday weeks, when a worker regularly earns overtime or commission that significantly supplements their income, is underpaying holiday pay. Employment tribunal cases on exactly this point have resulted in back-pay claims covering several years. If your take-home pay on holiday weeks is significantly lower than a normal working week, it is worth checking whether the calculation is being done correctly.

The 2024 reform for irregular hours workers

From January 2024, new rules introduced a simpler method for calculating holiday entitlement for irregular hours workers and part-year workers. These are workers whose hours are not fixed from week to week, including those on zero-hours contracts, casual workers, and seasonal employees.

Under the new system, holiday entitlement accrues at 12.07% of hours worked, paid as accrued. The 12.07% figure comes from dividing the statutory 5.6 weeks by the remaining 46.4 working weeks in the year (52 minus 5.6). For every hour worked, an irregular hours worker accrues the right to 7.24 minutes of paid holiday. This makes it easier for employers to administer and ensures workers cannot be denied holiday accrual simply because their hours vary.

Employers can choose to pay rolled-up holiday pay to these workers, which means including 12.07% extra in each hourly wage rather than paying separately during holiday periods. This was previously considered unlawful under EU case law, but the 2024 reform explicitly permits it for irregular hours workers in the UK, provided it is clearly identified as such in the worker's pay statement.

Carrying over unused holiday

Normally, workers cannot carry over statutory holiday from one year to the next. The purpose of annual leave is to allow proper rest, and the legal position is that holiday should be taken in the year it is earned. If you simply choose not to take your holidays, most employers are not obliged to let you carry them forward or pay them out at year end.

There are exceptions. If you could not take holiday because of long-term sickness absence, you have the right to carry over up to four weeks of statutory leave. Workers on family leave such as maternity, paternity, or shared parental leave who could not take their full entitlement can also carry it forward into the next leave year. Additionally, workers who were not given their full entitlement or were prevented from taking it by their employer can carry forward a greater amount.

Covid-related carryover rules that allowed up to two years of accrued leave to be carried forward have now largely worked through the system. Most employers reverted to normal carryover policies once the pandemic-era rules expired.

Holiday pay when you leave a job

When you leave a job, you are entitled to be paid for any accrued but untaken statutory holiday. This is called payment in lieu of leave, and it is a legal right, not something the employer can choose to withhold. The amount owed is calculated based on how much of the leave year has passed and how much holiday you have taken, compared to your full annual entitlement.

So if you leave halfway through the leave year and have taken only five of your 28 days, your employer owes you payment for nine days (14 days accrued pro-rata minus 5 taken). The payment rate is your normal week's pay, not a reduced figure. If you have taken more holiday than you have accrued at the point of leaving, some contracts allow the employer to deduct the excess from your final salary.

For anyone unsure about their entitlement, the holiday entitlement calculator works through the pro-rata calculation based on your start date, leave year, and entitlement, which is useful both for checking your standing mid-year and for verifying your final pay on leaving. If you believe you have been underpaid for holiday, the route is first to raise it with your employer, and if unresolved, to take it to an employment tribunal, where there is a three-month time limit for claims.