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Bank Holidays and Your Annual Leave: How It Really Works

22 January 2026

Bank holidays in England and Wales are a fixture of the calendar that most workers look forward to, but there is a widespread misconception about how they relate to annual leave. Many employees assume they have an automatic right to take every bank holiday off with pay, on top of their regular annual leave allowance. The reality is rather different. In this article, we clear up the confusion by explaining exactly how bank holidays interact with your statutory holiday entitlement, what obligations your employer has, and how different industries handle public holidays.

The Common Misconception

The most widely held misunderstanding about bank holidays is that they are an additional entitlement on top of your annual leave. In fact, there is no separate legal right to bank holidays in UK employment law. The statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks (28 days for a full-time worker) can include bank holidays. This means an employer can count the 8 standard bank holidays in England and Wales as part of your 28 days, leaving you with just 20 days of annual leave to use at your discretion.

Many employers do give bank holidays as additional days off, but this is a contractual benefit rather than a legal requirement. Whether you receive bank holidays on top of your statutory entitlement depends entirely on your employment contract. This is why it is so important to read your contract carefully when you start a new job and to understand exactly what your total holiday package includes.

How Many Bank Holidays Are There?

In England and Wales, there are typically 8 bank holidays per year:

Scotland has 9 public holidays, and Northern Ireland has 10, including St Patrick's Day and the Twelfth of July. The exact number can vary slightly from year to year, particularly when the government announces additional bank holidays for special occasions such as royal events.

What Your Contract Should Say

Your employment contract or written statement of terms should clearly state your annual leave entitlement and whether it includes or excludes bank holidays. Common formulations you might see include:

Watch out: If your contract says "20 days annual leave" without mentioning bank holidays, this could be ambiguous. It might mean 20 days plus bank holidays, or it might mean 20 days with bank holidays counted separately toward your 28-day statutory minimum. Clarify this with your employer to avoid misunderstandings.

Working on Bank Holidays

There is no automatic right to have a bank holiday off work. If your employer requires you to work on a bank holiday, they are within their rights to ask you to do so, provided your contract allows it. This is common in sectors such as retail, hospitality, healthcare, emergency services, and transport, where services must continue regardless of public holidays.

If you work on a bank holiday, your employer should either give you a day off in lieu (a replacement day off at another time) or count the bank holiday as one of your normal working days and give you an equivalent day of annual leave to use elsewhere. Some employers offer enhanced pay rates for bank holiday working, such as time-and-a-half or double time, but this is a contractual benefit, not a legal requirement. There is no statutory right to premium pay for working on a bank holiday.

However, your employer must still ensure that you receive your full 5.6-week statutory entitlement over the course of the year. If you work every bank holiday and your contract states that bank holidays are included in your 28 days, your employer must give you 28 other days off instead, or a combination of days off and bank holidays that totals at least 28 days.

Part-Time Workers and Bank Holidays

The interaction between bank holidays and part-time working creates a particular area of complexity and potential unfairness. Consider two workers: one works Monday to Friday, and the other works Tuesday to Friday. Most bank holidays fall on a Monday, so the Monday-to-Friday worker benefits from more bank holidays than the Tuesday-to-Friday worker. If bank holidays are included in the annual leave entitlement, this creates an imbalance.

To address this, many employers calculate bank holiday entitlement on a pro-rata basis. A full-time worker gets 8 bank holidays. A worker doing 4 days per week would get 6.4 bank holidays (8 multiplied by 4/5). This approach ensures fairness regardless of which days of the week someone works.

The alternative approach is to convert the entire holiday entitlement (including bank holidays) into hours and let workers use those hours flexibly. This avoids the issue of which day bank holidays fall on and gives all workers equitable treatment. Many larger employers have adopted this method as best practice.

Requiring Workers to Take Bank Holidays

Employers can require workers to take annual leave on specific dates, including bank holidays. This is known as "directing" holiday. To do this legally, the employer must give notice equal to at least twice the length of the leave period. For a single bank holiday, this means giving at least two days' notice before the bank holiday that the worker must take it as annual leave.

In practice, most employers establish the bank holiday arrangements at the start of the employment relationship through the contract, so the notice requirement is met from day one. However, if an employer wanted to introduce a new requirement to work on bank holidays where previously workers had the day off, they would need to consult and potentially amend contracts.

Bank Holidays During Sick Leave or Maternity Leave

If a bank holiday falls during a period of sick leave, you continue to accrue your annual leave as normal. The bank holiday does not reduce your remaining entitlement, and your employer cannot deduct it from your annual leave balance. When you return to work, your remaining holiday should be calculated as if the bank holiday did not occur during your absence.

Similarly, workers on maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, or shared parental leave continue to accrue annual leave, including any bank holiday entitlement. This accrued leave carries over and can be taken once the worker returns.

Religious Holidays and Alternative Days

UK bank holidays are predominantly based on the Christian calendar, which has led to discussions about whether workers of other faiths should be able to substitute bank holidays for their own religious observances. There is no legal right to substitute bank holidays for alternative religious holidays, but many employers recognise the importance of flexibility and allow workers to request swaps where operationally feasible.

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers must not discriminate on the grounds of religion or belief. While this does not create a right to specific days off, it does mean that employers should consider reasonable requests for time off for religious observances and not refuse them without good business justification. Some employers have adopted "floating holidays" that workers can use for any religious or cultural celebration, which is widely regarded as good practice.

Extra Bank Holidays

Occasionally, the government proclaims an additional bank holiday, as happened for the late Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and the coronation of King Charles III in 2023. When this happens, there is no automatic right for workers to have the day off. Whether you get the extra day depends on the wording of your contract. If your contract says you are entitled to "all bank and public holidays," the extra day should be included. If it specifies "the usual 8 bank holidays" or a fixed number of days, the extra bank holiday may not be covered.

In practice, most employers granted the additional bank holidays as goodwill gestures, but some required staff to work or to use a day of annual leave. If an extra bank holiday is announced, check your contract wording and speak to your employer promptly to understand the arrangements.

How to Check Your Entitlement

Use our Holiday Entitlement Calculator to work out your total statutory entitlement, including how bank holidays should factor in. If you find that your employer is not providing the correct amount of leave, raise the issue through your company's grievance procedure or contact ACAS for advice. Every worker in the UK deserves their full holiday entitlement, and understanding how bank holidays fit into the picture is an essential part of protecting your rights.

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