UK Holiday Entitlement Calculator

Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday per year. For a 5-day week that's 28 days; for a 3-day week it's 16.8 days. The statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days, so someone working 6 days a week still gets 28 days, not 33.6.

They can. Bank holidays don't have to be given as paid leave — an employer can include the usual 8 English bank holidays as part of your 5.6-week statutory entitlement (28 days = 20 days annual leave + 8 bank holidays is a common pattern).

You're entitled to the part of your annual leave that matches the months remaining in the leave year. In your first year, leave accrues at one-twelfth of the annual entitlement each month, rounded up to the nearest half day — starting part-way through a month still earns that month's twelfth. Example from GOV.UK: a 5-day worker starting 13 January (leave year from 1 January) accrues 2.5 days by the end of January (28 ÷ 12 = 2.33, rounded up).

Your employer must pay you in lieu of the statutory leave you accrued but didn't take. Accrual is pro-rata to how much of the leave year you worked: leave at the end of March in a January-start leave year having taken 2 days, and you're owed roughly 28 × 90/365 − 2 ≈ 4.9 days' pay. If you've taken more than you accrued, a deduction from final pay is only allowed if the contract permits it.

For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue leave at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period, rounded to the nearest hour (30 minutes or more rounds up). Working 30 hours in a weekly pay period accrues 4 hours of leave (30 × 12.07% = 3.62). Employers may instead pay rolled-up holiday pay at 12.07% on top of each payslip.

Your contract sets the carry-over rules. If you get the statutory 28 days, you can carry over a maximum of 8 days. You can carry more (up to 20 of the 28, or the full entitlement for irregular-hours workers) if you couldn't take leave because of sickness or family-related leave, or if your employer failed to give you a reasonable opportunity to take it.

Yes. Statutory holiday keeps building up during maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental leave and sickness absence. Special carry-over rules let you take leave you couldn't use during those absences in the following year.

The official government tool is GOV.UK's 'Calculate your holiday entitlement' (it's run by GOV.UK, not HMRC — HMRC handles tax, not leave rights). This calculator follows the same statutory rules — 5.6 weeks, the 28-day cap, first-year monthly accrual and the 12.07% method — and shows the working so you can check the numbers.