Answers to common questions about annual leave and holiday rights in the UK
Yes, absolutely. Workers on zero-hours contracts have the same statutory right to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave as any other worker. Your holiday accrues based on the hours you actually work, at a rate of 12.07% of hours worked. For example, if you work 100 hours in a month, you accrue 12.07 hours of paid holiday.
Your employer may use a rolled-up holiday pay arrangement, where an additional 12.07% is added to your hourly rate and paid with each shift. If this is the case, it should be shown separately on your payslip. Even with rolled-up pay, you still have the right to take time off; the payment arrangement simply means you receive the holiday pay as you earn it rather than when you take leave.
Agency workers are entitled to paid holiday from day one of their assignment. Under the Working Time Regulations, all workers, including agency workers, qualify for the statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave. From the first day of work, holiday begins to accrue. After 12 weeks in the same role, agency workers also gain the right to the same holiday entitlement as permanent employees doing the same job, if that entitlement is more generous than the statutory minimum.
Your employment agency is responsible for paying your holiday pay, not the company where you are working (the hirer). Check your agency contract to understand how your holiday pay is calculated and whether it uses the rolled-up pay method.
If you work compressed hours (for example, your full-time hours spread over four days instead of five), your holiday entitlement is calculated in hours rather than days to ensure fairness. You are entitled to the same total number of hours of holiday as a colleague working the same hours over five days.
For instance, if you work 37.5 hours over four days (9.375 hours per day), your entitlement of 5.6 weeks equals 210 hours of holiday (37.5 x 5.6). When you take a day off, it uses 9.375 hours rather than the 7.5 hours it would use for a five-day worker, so you have fewer days but the same number of hours overall.
Part-year workers are those who work for only part of the year, such as term-time-only school staff. Following the Supreme Court decision in Harpur Trust v Brazel (2022), part-year workers on permanent contracts are entitled to 5.6 weeks of holiday calculated using the 52-week reference period, ignoring weeks with no pay. This can result in a proportionally higher holiday entitlement compared to workers who work year-round.
However, subsequent legislative changes have introduced the option for employers to use a 12.07% accrual method for irregular hours and part-year workers, which may reduce this advantage. Check your contract and the current legislation for the method that applies to you.
No. There is no automatic legal right to have bank holidays as paid days off. Whether you get bank holidays off depends entirely on your contract of employment. Many employers do give bank holidays as additional paid days off, but others include them within your 28-day statutory entitlement. Some industries, such as retail and hospitality, commonly require staff to work on bank holidays.
If your contract states that you are entitled to bank holidays off with pay, then your employer must honour this. If you are required to work on a bank holiday, you should receive a day off in lieu or have it factored into your overall holiday entitlement.
There is no specific legal right to time off for religious holidays that are not bank holidays. However, your employer should consider requests for leave on religious grounds fairly and sensitively. Refusing a reasonable request without good justification could potentially amount to indirect religious discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.
In practice, most employers will accommodate requests for religious holiday leave by allowing you to use your annual leave entitlement. Some employers have policies that specifically address religious observance. If your request is refused, ask for the reason in writing and consider seeking advice from ACAS if you believe the refusal is discriminatory.
Yes, your employer can require you to take holiday on specific days, but they must give you adequate notice. The notice period must be at least twice the length of the holiday being imposed. So if your employer wants you to take one week off, they must give you at least two weeks' notice. This is commonly used during factory shutdowns, Christmas closures, or quiet business periods.
Your employer can also restrict when you take holiday (for example, blocking out busy periods), provided they still give you a reasonable opportunity to take all your statutory entitlement during the leave year.
Some employers offer a holiday trading scheme as part of their benefits package. This allows you to buy additional days of leave (usually deducted from your salary) or sell unused days for extra pay. However, you cannot sell your statutory 5.6 weeks of entitlement; you can only trade any additional contractual leave above the statutory minimum.
For example, if your contract gives you 33 days of holiday (including bank holidays), you could potentially sell up to 5 days (the difference between your contractual 33 days and the statutory 28 days). Your employer is not obliged to offer a holiday trading scheme, and the terms vary between employers.
When your employment ends, you are entitled to be paid for any statutory holiday that has accrued but not been taken. Your employer should calculate the holiday that has accrued up to and including your last day of work, subtract any holiday already taken, and pay you for the remainder in your final pay packet.
Conversely, if you have taken more holiday than you have accrued by your leaving date, your employer may be entitled to deduct the overpayment from your final pay, but only if this is permitted by your contract. Without a contractual right to make such deductions, your employer cannot simply withhold pay for overtaken holiday.
Rolled-up holiday pay is an arrangement where your employer adds an extra amount (12.07% of your pay) to each payment you receive, rather than paying you separately when you take time off. This has become a lawful option for irregular hours and part-year workers following recent legislative changes.
If your employer uses rolled-up holiday pay, the holiday pay element must be shown as a separate, identifiable item on your payslip. You still have the right to take time off even though you have already received the pay. For workers with regular hours and fixed contracts, rolled-up holiday pay is not generally used, and holiday pay should be paid at your normal rate when you take leave.
If you fall ill during a period of booked annual leave, you can ask your employer to treat the sick days as sick leave instead, preserving your holiday entitlement for another time. Your employer may require you to provide evidence such as a GP's fit note to support this request. The rules on this come from European case law (the Pereda case) which has been retained in UK law.
Your employer's sickness absence policy should set out the procedure for reclaiming holiday days lost to illness. While the employer can set reasonable requirements for evidence, they cannot simply refuse to allow the conversion of holiday to sick leave when genuine illness is demonstrated.
Use our free calculator to work out your statutory holiday entitlement, whether you work full-time, part-time, or irregular hours.
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