UK holiday pay: 5.6 weeks, 28 days and the 12.07% rule

Paid holiday in the UK is not a favour from an employer and not a clause that can quietly be dropped. It is a statutory floor: 5.6 weeks a year for almost everyone the law treats as a worker, including agency staff, people on irregular hours and those who only work part of the year. Here is how the minimum is counted, what holiday pay must contain, and why the line marked 12.07% on a payslip matters more than it looks.

How many days of holiday does the law give you?

Five point six weeks. For a five-day week that works out at 28 days a year, the figure GOV.UK states directly in its Holiday entitlement guide. The arithmetic is simple: days worked per week multiplied by 5.6. Work three days a week and you are owed 16.8 days (3 × 5.6) — not a reduced holiday but the same proportion, because part-time workers cannot be treated less favourably than full-time ones.

The minimum has a ceiling. Statutory paid leave is capped at 28 days: someone working six days a week does not get 6 × 5.6 = 33.6 days, they still get 28. A contract may offer more, but that extra is the employer's own addition and the statutory rules do not all apply to it.

Do bank holidays count towards the 5.6 weeks?

They can. The law does not require bank or public holidays to be given as paid leave, and an employer may count them inside the statutory 5.6 weeks. That is why in one company 28 days means "28 days plus the public holidays" and in another it means "20 days and eight bank holidays". The answer is in the contract, not the calendar.

How is holiday counted on irregular hours?

For irregular hours workers and part-year workers — people with unpaid stretches of at least a week in the leave year — holiday is not handed over as a fixed number of days in advance. It builds up from the hours already worked, a rule that applies to leave years beginning after 31 March 2024. The official GOV.UK calculator works out what has accrued in a pay period.

One detail that is often missed: holiday keeps accruing during a probationary period, while off sick, and on maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental leave. Acas lists all of these explicitly.

How much must be paid for those days?

For irregular hours and part-year workers, holiday pay is based on average pay over the previous 52 weeks, whenever the leave year happens to start. If someone has worked fewer than 52 weeks, the employer uses the full weeks they have. Weeks in which the worker was on statutory sick pay only, on reduced statutory leave pay, or had no pay at all are left out and replaced by earlier weeks — but an employer may look back no further than 104 weeks.

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Holiday pay must include more than basic salary. By law it has to cover commission and other payments tied to contractual tasks, payments for length of service, seniority or professional qualifications, and overtime where it has been paid regularly over the past year.

What is rolled-up holiday pay and the 12.07%?

It is holiday pay spread across the year as a top-up on every payslip instead of being paid when the holiday is taken. It is permitted only for irregular hours workers and part-year workers. Acas sets three firm conditions: at least 12.07% of the worker's total pay in the pay period, paid at the same time as the pay for that period, and shown as a separate payment on the payslip.

Acas gives the worked example. A worker earns £1,000 in June, so £120.70 of rolled-up holiday pay is due on top. In July they work two weeks, take two weeks off and earn £500: the top-up is £60.35, and the holiday fortnight itself brings nothing extra, because it has already been paid. If the hours are irregular and that separate line is missing, that is the first question to ask.

What if the holiday pay is short?

Start with a written request to the employer: the calculation has to be shown. If that fails, the dispute goes to an employment tribunal, and since 1 October 2026 the deadline is six months less one day instead of the old three months. Unpaid holiday pay is one of the claims that doubling covers.

Six months is generous next to the old limit, but it is not open-ended — and reconstructing 52 weeks of payslips only gets harder the longer it is left.