Annual leave entitlement: 5.6 weeks, part-time and pro rata.

Almost everyone classed as a worker is entitled to paid holiday. That covers agency workers, workers with irregular hours and part-year workers. You can give more than the law requires, and set your own rules for the extra.

The statutory entitlement is 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, capped at 28 days. Someone who works 5 days a week gets 28 days. Someone who works 6 days a week also gets 28 days, because of the cap.

In the Working Time Regulations 1998 it comes in two parts: 4 weeks under regulation 13 and a further 1.6 weeks under regulation 13A, with the two together capped at 28 days.

Bank holidays don’t have to be given as paid leave. You can count them as part of the 5.6 weeks, so check what your contracts say. Our bank holidays guide lists the dates.

Part-time workers with regular hours who work the whole year still get at least 5.6 weeks. In days, that is fewer than 28 days: a week’s worth of their own working days, times 5.6. Someone who works 3 days a week gets at least 16.8 days.

Our free holiday entitlement calculator works it out for one person from their days or hours, and for starters and leavers.

An irregular-hours worker is one whose hours in a pay period often or always change. A part-year worker works only part of the year. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, both build up leave as they go, at 12.07% of the hours they worked in each pay period.

Leave worked out this way is rounded up to the nearest hour when the part-hour is half an hour or more. Our irregular hours guide covers the rest of these rules.

You can run holiday on a leave year, or on an accrual system. Under accrual, a worker gets one-twelfth of their leave each month.

Someone who starts after the leave year has begun gets only part of that year’s entitlement, in proportion to the part of the year left. They can accrue one-twelfth of their leave a month from their first day, or you can work out their first month pro rata to the days they work in it. Leave for a part month is rounded up to the nearest half day.

• Booking. The general rule is that a worker gives notice at least twice as long as the leave, such as 3 days’ notice for 1 day off. You can refuse leave at a particular time, but not refuse to let someone take it at all. To make staff take leave, you give notice at least twice as long as the leave.
• Carrying it over. Statutory leave is meant to be taken in the leave year it is due. Leave someone couldn’t take because they were on other statutory leave carries into the next year. Regulation 13 leave missed through sickness carries over too, to be taken within 18 months of the end of the year it came from. So can leave someone was never given a reasonable chance to take.
• Leaving. Statutory leave can only be paid instead of taken when someone leaves. Untaken statutory leave must be paid, even after a dismissal for gross misconduct. If they have taken more than they built up, you can take money back from their final pay only if that was agreed in writing beforehand.