UK Holiday Entitlement: The 5.6 Weeks Rule

This guide covers England, Scotland and Wales. The Working Time Regulations 1998 extend to Great Britain only (reg 1(2)). Northern Ireland has its own holiday rules, with the same 5.6 week minimum; see nidirect.

Entitlement

Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, including agency workers, irregular hours workers and part-year workers (GOV.UK, holiday entitlement). In law this is two parts:

• 4 weeks of annual leave in each leave year (Working Time Regulations 1998, reg 13(1)); and
• 1.6 weeks of additional leave, with the two together capped at 28 days (reg 13A(2) and (3)).

Most workers on a 5-day week must get at least 28 days of paid annual leave. Because of the cap, someone working 6 days a week is still entitled to 28 days. You can offer more than the legal minimum, and you do not have to apply all the statutory rules to the extra leave; for example, you can require a period of service before it starts (GOV.UK).

Leave year and new starters

The leave year starts on the date set in a relevant agreement, such as the contract. If none is set, it starts on the day the job started (for jobs that began after 1 October 1998) and on each anniversary (reg 13(3); GOV.UK, calculate leave entitlement).

Someone who starts part way through a leave year gets a proportion of the year's leave (reg 13(5)). In the first year of employment, the leave a worker may take at any time is limited to what has built up: one twelfth of the year's entitlement on the first day of each month, less leave already taken. A fraction of a day other than a half day is rounded up to a half day or a whole day (reg 15A). GOV.UK's example: a worker on a 5-day week with 28 days a year has 7 days after their third month (GOV.UK).

Booking leave

Unless the contract says otherwise, a worker gives notice of at least twice the length of the leave plus 1 day, for example 3 days' notice for 1 day off. An employer can refuse or cancel leave with notice of at least the length of the leave plus 1 day. You can refuse leave at a particular time, and tell staff when to take it, for example on bank holidays or at Christmas, but you cannot refuse to let workers take it at all (GOV.UK, booking time off).

Part-time, irregular hours and part-year workers

Part-time on regular hours. They are entitled to at least 5.6 weeks, which comes to fewer than 28 days. GOV.UK's example: someone working 3 days a week must get at least 16.8 days a year (3 x 5.6) (GOV.UK).

Irregular hours and part-year workers. GOV.UK describes irregular hours workers as those whose hours in a pay period often or always change, and part-year workers as those with periods of at least a week in a leave year when they do not work and are not paid (GOV.UK). For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, they build up leave at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period, up to 28 days a year (reg 15B(3) and (4)). The rules were added by the Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023.

GOV.UK's example: a worker paid weekly who works 30 hours earns 4 hours of leave (30 x 12.07 / 100 = 3.621, rounded up because it is 0.5 of an hour or more). They can take it from their next pay period (GOV.UK). For leave years that began on or before 31 March 2024, the accrual method does not have to be used until the leave year renews. GOV.UK has a holiday entitlement calculator for each working pattern.

Bank holidays

Bank or public holidays do not have to be given as paid leave. An employer can choose to include them as part of a worker's statutory annual leave (GOV.UK). So a worker on a 5-day week given 28 days including bank holidays has the statutory minimum. Say in the contract whether bank holidays are included.

Bank holidays differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. GOV.UK lists the dates for each (GOV.UK, bank holidays).

Sickness during holiday

GOV.UK sets out how sickness and holiday interact (GOV.UK, taking sick leave):

• Statutory holiday keeps building up while an employee is off sick, however long they are off.
• If an employee is ill just before or during their holiday, they can take it as sick leave instead.
• An employee can ask to take paid holiday for time off sick, for example if they do not qualify for sick pay. Any rules on sick leave still apply.
• Employers cannot force employees to take annual leave when they are eligible for sick leave.

GOV.UK also says that if an employer wants a worker to take leave, the worker must be able to rest during it, so an employer cannot force a sick worker to take leave (GOV.UK).

Carry-over

The rules as GOV.UK states them (GOV.UK, calculate leave entitlement):

• The contract decides. The worker's contract says how many days of leave they can carry over into the next year. A worker who gets 28 days can carry over a maximum of 8 days. If they get more than 28, the employer may allow them to carry over the extra untaken leave.
• Family-related leave. A worker who cannot take some or all of their leave because they are on family-related leave, for example parental leave, can carry the untaken leave into next year.
• Sickness. A worker who could not take their leave because they were sick can carry over up to 20 of their 28 days if they work regular hours for the whole year, or up to 28 days if they work irregular hours or part of the year.
• Leave the worker was unable to take. A worker can carry over their whole entitlement if they did not receive rolled-up holiday pay they were entitled to, were not given a reasonable opportunity to take leave, or were not told they would lose leave not taken by the end of the leave year.

The law is in regulations 13 and 13A of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (reg 13; reg 13A).

Holiday pay

Workers are entitled to a week's pay for each week of statutory leave they take (reg 16(1); GOV.UK, holiday pay). How a week's pay is worked out depends on the working pattern (GOV.UK):

• Reference period. If no pay was paid in a week, count back another week, up to 104 weeks. A worker with less than 52 weeks of pay is averaged over the full weeks they have worked (GOV.UK; reg 16(3)).
• Normal and basic rates. For regular hours workers, at least 4 weeks must be paid at the normal rate and the remaining 1.6 weeks can be paid at the basic rate. Part-year workers whose leave year began on or before 31 March 2024 follow the same 4 plus 1.6 week rule. For irregular hours workers and other part-year workers, all leave is paid at the normal rate. The normal rate includes commission, regular overtime and payments for length of service or professional qualifications, and does not usually include bonuses (GOV.UK; reg 16(3ZA)).
• Rolled-up holiday pay. It is not allowed for regular hours workers. It can be used for irregular hours and part-year workers, unless their leave year began on or before 31 March 2024 (GOV.UK).
• Records. From 6 April 2026, employers must keep records of annual leave and holiday pay for at least 6 years, such as the leave days taken and the holiday pay paid (GOV.UK).

Pay on leaving

Statutory leave cannot be replaced by a payment except when employment ends (reg 13(9)(b); reg 13A(6)). On leaving, a worker who has taken less than their share of leave for the part of the leave year that has passed must be paid in lieu for the difference (reg 14(1) to (3)). Leave carried forward from an earlier year must also be paid (reg 14(6)).

• During their notice period the worker may be able to take whatever statutory leave is left (GOV.UK, taking holiday before leaving a job).
• Employers must pay for untaken statutory leave, even if the worker is dismissed for gross misconduct (GOV.UK).
• If the worker has taken more leave than their entitlement, you must not take money from their final pay unless this was agreed in writing beforehand (GOV.UK; reg 14(4)).

Holiday and absence rates

Holiday is paid leave that workers have a legal right to. The ONS defines the sickness absence rate as the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness or injury (ONS, sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2025), so holiday does not belong in it, and counting it would push employees towards trigger points for using a right the law gives them.

Record holiday under its own leave type. When a holiday is changed to sick leave because the employee fell ill, change the leave type in your records too, so the dates are counted once and as the right kind of leave. Our guide to UK employment law on sickness absence covers how holiday fits with sick pay and the Equality Act, and our time off for dependants guide covers another kind of leave that is not sickness.

In Appsentia

• Loads UK bank holidays for each nation from GOV.UK.
• Keeps the leave types or single absences you exclude out of scoring.
• Imports leave from a CSV or Excel export of any HR or payroll system.

Sources

1. GOV.UK, Holiday entitlement: entitlement, calculate leave entitlement, holiday pay, booking time off and taking holiday before leaving a job; Calculate holiday entitlement.
2. GOV.UK, Taking sick leave; UK bank holidays.
3. Working Time Regulations 1998, regulation 1, 13, 13A, 14, 15A, 15B and 16, legislation.gov.uk.
4. The Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023, legislation.gov.uk.
5. ONS, Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2025.
6. nidirect, Holiday entitlements, for Northern Ireland.

Sources checked on 11 November 2026. This page is general information, not legal advice.