How much holiday are employees entitled to?

Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, workers get 4 weeks' leave (regulation 13) plus an extra 1.6 weeks (regulation 13A), making 5.6 weeks a year, capped at 28 days. This applies to workers, not just employees, from day one.

• Bank holidays: there's no separate right to paid bank holidays. You can count them as part of the 28 days, or give them on top. Your contract should say which.
• Holiday pay: for the 4 weeks, pay "normal" pay, which includes regularly paid overtime and commission. The other 1.6 weeks can be paid at basic pay.
• First year: in the first year, regular-hours staff build up leave at one twelfth of their entitlement each month (regulation 15A).
• Booking: unless the contract says otherwise, a worker should give at least twice as much notice as the leave they want. You can refuse a request by giving at least as much notice as the leave requested.

Your contract can give more than the minimum, but not less.

Part-time staff on regular hours get 5.6 times their normal working week. Someone working 3 days a week gets 16.8 days. Someone working 4 days gets 22.4 days.

Treating part-timers less favourably than comparable full-timers is unlawful, so if full-time staff get extra contractual holiday, part-timers should get it pro rata too.

For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, special rules apply to:

• irregular hours workers, whose paid hours are wholly or mostly variable, such as zero-hours staff
• part-year workers, who work only part of the year with unpaid periods of at least a week, such as term-time staff

They build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period (regulation 15B), up to 28 days a year.

You can also choose rolled-up holiday pay for them (regulation 16A): pay an extra 12.07% of their pay each pay period, shown as a separate item on the payslip. They then take holiday unpaid, because it's already been paid. Rolled-up pay isn't allowed for regular-hours workers.

If you don't roll it up, their holiday pay is their average weekly pay over the previous 52 weeks in which they were paid.

The general rule is use it or lose it, but:

• the extra 1.6 weeks can be carried into the next leave year if the contract allows (up to 8 days for a five-day week)
• leave missed because of sickness can be carried over, up to 4 weeks (or 28 days for irregular hours and part-year workers), and must be used within 18 months of the end of the leave year
• leave missed because of maternity or other family leave must be carried over in full
• if you didn't give a reasonable opportunity to take leave, encourage it, or warn that untaken leave would be lost, the worker can carry it over

Holiday keeps building up during sick leave and family leave.

When someone leaves, you must pay for statutory holiday they've built up but not taken, even if they're dismissed for gross misconduct. If they've taken more holiday than they built up, you can only deduct it from final pay if they agreed to that in writing beforehand.

Since 6 April 2026, employers must keep records showing they've complied with holiday entitlements and holiday pay, and keep them for six years. The new Fair Work Agency is due to start enforcing holiday pay in 2027.

These rules apply in England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own working time regulations: the 5.6 weeks is the same, but the 12.07% and rolled-up pay rules don't apply there.