Holiday for Part-Time, Zero Hours and Irregular Hours Workers
Holiday for people who work the same hours every week is straightforward: 5.6 weeks, capped at 28 days, pro rata if you are part time. Holiday for people whose hours move around is where employers get it wrong, and where a lot of workers are quietly underpaid for years.
The law changed for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, and the change was significant. If your employer is still working it out the way they did in 2022, the figures on your payslip may well be wrong.
Part-time is not the same as irregular hours
These get conflated constantly and they are treated completely differently.
A part-time worker works fewer hours than full time but works them to a set pattern. Three days every week, or five mornings every week. Their entitlement is 5.6 weeks of their normal working week, worked out in advance.
An irregular hours worker is someone whose paid hours in each pay period are, under their contract, wholly or mostly variable. A part-year worker is contracted to work only part of the year, with periods of at least a week when they are not required to work and are not paid. Term-time-only staff on a permanent contract are the classic example.
Those last two accrue holiday as they go, at 12.07% of hours worked. Part-time workers do not.
Part-time workers: the simple case
Multiply the number of days you work each week by 5.6. That is your entitlement in days, capped at 28.
| Days worked per week | Statutory entitlement |
|---|---|
| 5 | 28 days |
| 4 | 22.4 days |
| 3 | 16.8 days |
| 2 | 11.2 days |
| 1 | 5.6 days |
If you work the same number of days each week but the days are longer or shorter than a colleague's, it is often clearer to calculate in hours: your normal weekly hours multiplied by 5.6.
The place this goes wrong most often is bank holidays. Bank and public holidays do not have to be given as paid leave, and an employer can include them within the 5.6 weeks. If they do, and you work three days a week that happen not to include Mondays, you can end up worse off than a colleague working the same number of days who does work Mondays. The usual fix is to give every part-time worker a pro-rata allowance of bank holiday time added to their entitlement, which they then book like any other leave. That is not a legal requirement in itself, but the Part-time Workers Regulations mean a part-time worker must not be treated less favourably than a comparable full-timer, so a scheme that leaves part-timers worse off is a problem.
Irregular hours and part-year workers: the 12.07% Method
For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, these workers build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually worked in each pay period.
Where does 12.07% come from? A year has 52 weeks. Take off the 5.6 weeks of statutory leave and you are left with 46.4 working weeks. 5.6 divided by 46.4 is 0.1207. It is simply the ratio of holiday to work.
Rounding follows a specific rule: round up to the nearest hour if the entitlement is 0.5 of an hour or more, and down if it is less.
GOV.UK's own example: a worker paid weekly works 30 hours in a week. 30 × 12.07 ÷ 100 = 3.621 hours. Rounded, they have earned 4 hours of leave that week.
Across a 12 week assignment at 20 hours a week, that is 240 hours worked and 28.97 hours of holiday earned, so roughly 29 hours. At the National Living Wage rate of £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026, that leave is worth about £368. Not a rounding error.
Rolled-up Holiday pay is legal again, with conditions
Rolled-up holiday pay means adding an amount to every payslip instead of paying you when you actually take time off. It was unlawful for years. For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024 it is allowed again, but only for irregular hours and part-year workers.
The conditions matter:
- It must be calculated at at least 12.07% of your total pay in the pay period.
- It must be paid at the same time as the pay for the work done in that period.
- It must appear as a separate item on your payslip, clearly marked.
- It applies to the whole 5.6 weeks, all paid at your normal rate.
The important thing to understand about rolled-up pay is that it changes when you get the money, not whether you get the time. You still have the right to take the leave. You simply will not be paid anything extra during the week you take it, because you have already been paid. That means budgeting for the weeks you are off, which is the real practical downside.
Zero hours contracts
Being on a zero hours contract does not change your right to paid holiday. If your hours are wholly or mostly variable, you are an irregular hours worker and the 12.07% accrual applies. If in practice you work a settled pattern every week, you may not be an irregular hours worker at all, whatever the contract is called, and the standard 5.6 weeks calculation applies instead.
Agency workers get holiday too. Which entity is responsible depends on the arrangement, but somebody is, and "you are agency, so you do not get holiday" is simply wrong.
Your first year in a job
If you are not an irregular hours or part-year worker, your employer can use the accrual system in your first year of employment. You build up one twelfth of your annual entitlement at the start of each month.
Someone entitled to 28 days a year has earned 7 days by the end of their third month (28 ÷ 12 × 3). Someone starting on 13 January with a leave year running to 31 December accrues 2.33 days for January, which is rounded up to 2.5 days.
After the first year, you get the full entitlement from the start of each leave year.
Checking your own figures
Three checks catch most errors.
- Find out when your leave year starts. It should be in your contract or staff handbook. If nothing is written down, statutory rules set it, usually from the date you started or from 1 October if you started before the regulations applied to you.
- Check which method your employer is using. Ask directly. If they are using 12.07% and you work a fixed pattern, or using a fixed 28 days when your hours vary wildly, one of you is wrong.
- Keep your own record of hours. If you are on variable hours, note your hours each week. If you ever need to challenge a figure, your own contemporaneous record is the evidence.
The holiday entitlement calculator will do the arithmetic for fixed hours, part-time and irregular hours patterns, which is a faster way to sanity check a figure than arguing about it from memory.
If the figure is wrong
Raise it with your manager or payroll first, in writing, showing your calculation. Most of these are genuine mistakes rather than anything deliberate, and a clear worked example usually resolves it.
If that does not work, raise a formal grievance. Beyond that, unpaid holiday pay can be pursued as an unlawful deduction from wages at an employment tribunal. The time limit is short, three months less one day, and you must contact Acas for early conciliation before you can bring a claim. Acas also runs a free helpline for advice before it gets that far.
This is general information rather than legal advice. For a specific situation, particularly one involving a dispute, speak to Acas or an employment solicitor.