Almost every worker in the UK gets 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which is 28 days if you work five days a week and never more than 28 days of statutory leave however many days you work. Your employer can count bank holidays inside that figure and can choose some of your dates, Christmas included, if the notice reaches you in time. What it can't do is let your holiday quietly lapse at the end of the year if you were off sick, on family leave or never warned you'd lose it.
If you work in Northern Ireland, most of this applies to you too. Your rules differ in a few places, and they're gathered near the end.
On this page
How much paid holiday the law gives you
The legal minimum is 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. On a five-day week that's 28 days, and 28 days is also the ceiling for statutory leave, so someone who works six days a week still gets 28. GOV.UK uses exactly that example. The right belongs to workers, not only employees. Part-timers, zero-hours workers and agency workers all have it. Someone who's genuinely self-employed usually doesn't, Acas says.
Holiday builds from your first day and keeps building through a probationary period, sick leave and statutory leave such as maternity leave. Your contract can give you more than the minimum, never less, and those extra days can carry their own conditions, such as working there a set time before you get them.
Find your working pattern in the first column and read across.
Your statutory minimum, by working pattern
| How you work | Your statutory minimum a year | How it's worked out |
|---|---|---|
| 5 days a week | 28 days | 5 × 5.6 |
| 6 days a week | 28 days | 6 × 5.6 is 33.6, capped at 28 |
| 4 days a week | 22.4 days | 4 × 5.6 |
| 3 days a week | 16.8 days | 3 × 5.6 |
| 2 days a week | 11.2 days | 2 × 5.6 |
| 37.5 hours over 4 long days | 210 hours | 37.5 × 5.6, or 9 hours 23 minutes for each day off |
| 16 hours over 2 days | 89.6 hours | 16 × 5.6 |
| Irregular hours or part of the year, in England, Scotland or Wales | 12.07% of the hours you work in each pay period, up to 28 days | A 30-hour week builds 4 hours |
| Irregular hours in Northern Ireland | No set rate in the regulations | Paid time off for every hour you work, says nidirect |
The hours rows are GOV.UK's own holiday calculator results for a full leave year. Your contract can give you more than these figures but never less.
Part-time, four-day weeks and compressed hours
On a regular pattern, multiply the days you work each week by 5.6. Three days a week gives you 16.8 days a year. Part-timers can't be treated less favourably than full-timers, so if full-time staff get more than the legal minimum, you get the same extra in proportion.
Part days need watching. Your employer can't round one down. In your first year it must round up to the nearest half day, and after that it may round up but doesn't have to. Ask how you're meant to use the leftover fraction. Acas suggests leaving early or coming in late.
If your days are long, count in hours. GOV.UK's calculator puts 37.5 hours over four days at 210 hours a year, taken as 9 hours 23 minutes for each day off, which is the same 22.4 days any four-day week gets. Six days of 8 hours comes to 224 hours, still 28 days. For any other pattern, GOV.UK's free holiday entitlement calculator does the sum.
Zero hours, irregular hours and term-time work
In England, Scotland and Wales, two groups have had their own rules for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. Irregular-hours workers have paid hours that are, in the regulations' words, "wholly or mostly variable". Part-year workers have stretches of at least a week that they don't work and aren't paid for, which is how many term-time jobs run.
For both groups, holiday builds up at 12.07% of the hours you work in each pay period, up to 28 days a year. Thirty minutes or more rounds up to a full hour, and anything less counts as nothing. GOV.UK's example is a weekly-paid worker who does 30 hours and earns 4 hours of holiday, because 3.621 rounds up. Holiday keeps building during sick leave and family leave, based on your average hours before you went off.
Your employer can pay holiday pay with your wages, adding 12.07% shown separately on your payslip. You still build up time off. This way of paying is called rolled-up pay, and it's allowed only for these two groups. For regular-hours workers who work all year, folding holiday pay into the hourly rate breaks the rules.
Holiday you never ask for tends never to get taken, so put every request in writing.
Northern Ireland has none of the 12.07% rules. Its official guidance, nidirect, says you get paid time off for every hour you work, and rolled-up pay isn't allowed there.
If you start or leave part way through the year
Your leave year follows your contract or workplace agreement. Without either, it starts on your employment anniversary. In Great Britain, jobs begun by 1 October 1998 use 1 October instead. Join part way through and you get the share of the year that's left.
On regular hours, your first year's holiday builds up month by month. You get one-twelfth of the year's total on the first day of each month, with any fraction of a day rounded up to the next half day. GOV.UK's example is someone on 28 days who starts on 13 January, in a leave year that began on 1 January. They get 2.5 days for January, because 28 divided by 12 is 2.33, rounded up. Three months in, they'd have 7 days.
When you leave, your employer must pay you for unused statutory holiday, even after gross misconduct, GOV.UK says. Holiday already covered by rolled-up pay isn't paid again. Our resignation letter guide works through what you're paid when you leave.
Do bank holidays count towards your 28 days?
They can. Bank holidays aren't a separate legal right, and GOV.UK says so in one line: "Bank or public holidays do not have to be given as paid leave." Your employer may count them inside your 5.6 weeks or give them on top. Your contract or written statement should say which.
Working on a bank holiday doesn't earn you extra pay unless your contract says so. A day off in lieu happens only if your employer agrees. You can't be paid instead of a bank holiday either, Acas says, except as untaken holiday when you leave. Whether you get a one-off extra bank holiday is down to your contract. However your employer handles them, you must still get your full 5.6 weeks as paid time off.
Bank holidays by nation
| Nation | Bank holidays in 2026 | Bank holidays in 2027 | Left to choose in 2027 on a five-day week, if all count inside 28 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 8 | 8 | 20 |
| Scotland | 10, including a one-off World Cup holiday on 15 June | 9 | 19 |
| Northern Ireland | 10 | 10 | 18 |
Counts from GOV.UK's official list of bank holidays for each nation. If your leave year runs from April to March, count the ones inside your own leave year, because Easter moves.
When a bank holiday lands on a day you don't work
If a bank holiday falls on a day you don't normally work, your employer can't make you use a holiday day for it. Acas gives an example. Ali and Jo both work three days a week and get 16.8 days, bank holidays included, and the business shuts on bank holidays. Ali works Mondays and Jo doesn't. Because more bank holidays fall on a Monday, Ali spends more of the same allowance on them than Jo does.
Where bank holidays come on top of the minimum, nidirect says part-timers should get them pro rata, even when they fall on a day off. Ask your employer, in writing, how it handles yours.
When your employer can choose your dates
Picking dates works both ways. You choose when to take holiday by giving your employer notice. Your employer can also give you notice, either telling you to take holiday on particular days or refusing days you've asked for. A Christmas closure, a quiet spell or an order to use up what's left before the leave year ends all work this way. Your contract can change all of these notice rules, and it often does.
There are limits. Your employer can't turn you down so often that you can't take your full entitlement in the year. Acas says it should have a good business reason to refuse or cancel holiday. And it can't push you onto holiday while you're ill. GOV.UK puts it plainly: "an employer cannot force a sick worker to take leave". Northern Ireland's regulations word all of this the same way.
The notice rule, counted the way the law counts it
The rule sounds simple, and it's easy to be a day out. Count back from the first day of the leave. If you're asking for holiday, or your employer is telling you to take it, the notice has to arrive before the date that's twice as many days ahead as the leave. To refuse, your employer needs as many days as the leave itself. These are calendar days, weekends included, and a part day counts as a day.
The words that matter in the regulation are "before the relevant date". Twice the leave is the cut-off, so notice that lands exactly on it is a day late. That's why GOV.UK's guide says "plus 1 day". Its examples are 3 days' notice for 1 day's leave, and 11 days' notice to refuse 10 days. Acas words it as "at least twice as many calendar days", which is one day short of what the regulation says.
So add a day, whichever side you're on. If your contract sets its own notice periods, those apply instead.
A Christmas shutdown, worked through
This year, GOV.UK's list puts the bank holidays across the UK on Friday 25 December, Monday 28 December (the substitute day for Boxing Day) and Friday 1 January 2027. Scotland adds Monday 4 January, standing in for 2 January. That leaves three working days, Tuesday 29 to Thursday 31 December.
If your employer shuts for those three days and makes you use holiday, the notice must reach you by Tuesday 22 December. If it also makes you take Thursday 24 December, the deadline moves back to Tuesday 15 December, because the count runs from the first day of leave. Your own request for those three days needs the same notice as your employer's.
There's one catch. A closure written into your contract may already count as notice. "The notice might already be in your contract," Citizens Advice warns, so read yours before you argue about the date.
Christmas 2026: the latest the notice can reach you
| What's happening | Leave days involved | Notice must arrive by |
|---|---|---|
| Your employer closes on 29, 30 and 31 December and makes you use holiday | 3 | Tuesday 22 December 2026 |
| Your employer also makes you take Thursday 24 December | 4 | Tuesday 15 December 2026 |
| You ask for 29, 30 and 31 December off | 3 | Tuesday 22 December 2026 |
| Your employer turns that request down | 3 | Friday 25 December 2026 |
Worked out under regulation 15 of the Working Time Regulations and its Northern Ireland twin, which apply unless your contract sets its own notice. The bank holidays on 25 and 28 December and 1 January aren't leave days in these examples, nor is 4 January in Scotland. They still count towards the notice period.
Use it or lose it: what happens to holiday you haven't taken
Statutory holiday belongs to the leave year it builds up in, and by default you take it in that year. While you're still in the job, it can't be swapped for money. That only happens when you leave. Days your contract gives you on top of the 5.6 weeks follow your contract's own rules.
There are four exceptions, and what stopped you taking the holiday decides which one applies. The last turns on three duties your employer owes you: to accept you're owed holiday and the pay for it, to give you a fair chance to take it and encourage you to, and to warn you that anything you can't carry over will be lost.
Find what happened to you in the first column.
When untaken holiday carries into next year
| What happened | What carries over on a five-day week | How long you have | The rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| You didn't book it, and nothing stopped you | By agreement, up to 8 days for regular-hours workers. For irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain, the agreement sets the amount. | The next leave year only | Regs 13A(7) and 15D(2) |
| You were on maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental or other statutory leave | All the statutory holiday you couldn't take | Into the following leave year | Regs 13(14) and 13A(7A) |
| You were off sick | Up to 20 days, or everything built up (up to 28 days) for irregular-hours and part-year workers | Use it within 18 months of the end of the leave year it built up in | Regs 13(15) and 15D(4) |
| Your employer didn't accept you were owed it or its pay, didn't give you a fair chance to take it or encourage you to, or didn't warn you it would be lost | Up to 20 days, or everything built up for irregular-hours and part-year workers | Until the end of the first full leave year in which your employer gets all of that right | Regs 13(16) to (18) and 15D(5) to (7) |
Regulation numbers are the Working Time Regulations 1998, which cover England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland's regulations 15 and 16 give the same routes for the 20 days and the 8 days.
If you were off sick or on family leave
Holiday keeps building while you're off sick, and through maternity, paternity leave, adoption and shared parental leave. If family leave stops you using your holiday, all the statutory holiday you couldn't take moves into the following leave year.
Sickness comes with a time limit. The four weeks of basic leave, which is 20 days on a five-day week, carry over, and you must use them within 18 months of the end of the leave year they built up in. If your leave year follows the calendar, holiday you lost to sickness in 2026 has to be used by 30 June 2028. Irregular-hours and part-year workers carry everything they built up, to a maximum of 28 days.
GOV.UK's guide leaves the 18-month limit out. The regulation has it, and so do Acas and Citizens Advice, so plan around it.
You can ask to take holiday while you're on sick leave and get holiday pay for it, which can matter once statutory sick pay is all that's coming in. Your employer can't force you to take it, though.
If your employer never warned you
This is the exception that matters if nobody ever told you your holiday would expire. Your holiday carries over if, in that leave year, your employer failed to "recognise" your right to the holiday or to be paid for it. It also carries over if your employer didn't give you "a reasonable opportunity to take the leave" or "encourage" you to take it, or didn't "inform" you that leave not taken "will be lost". Those are the regulation's own words.
If any of that went wrong, up to four weeks (20 days on a five-day week) carries forward. It keeps carrying until the end of the first full leave year in which your employer gets all three right. Irregular-hours and part-year workers carry everything they built up.
Acas and Citizens Advice both say four weeks. GOV.UK says "their whole leave entitlement", which goes further than the regulation for anyone on regular hours. We'd claim the four weeks with confidence, and the other 1.6 weeks only if your contract backs you.
These duties are about what your employer did, so the paper trail is your evidence. Keep every holiday request and every reply.
If you work in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland has its own Working Time Regulations, made in 2016. The basics match the rest of the UK: 5.6 weeks a year, capped at 28 days, and the same notice rules for booking and refusing holiday. There are ten bank and public holidays, including St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne. If all ten sit inside a five-day worker's 28 days, 18 are left to choose.
Since 1 January 2024, workers in Northern Ireland have had the same right as the rest of the UK to carry holiday over after sickness, family leave or an employer's failure. The official nidirect page on taking your holidays hasn't caught up. It still says "In the majority of circumstances, you do not have a right to carry leave over." Trust the regulations over that page.
Before any industrial tribunal claim, your first call is the Labour Relations Agency. With the law this different, advice from solicitors in Northern Ireland is worth more than usual.
Where Northern Ireland differs
| Rule | England, Scotland and Wales | Northern Ireland |
|---|---|---|
| Irregular hours and part-year work | 12.07% of hours worked, built up each pay period | No set rate in the regulations |
| Holiday pay added to your hourly rate | Allowed only for irregular-hours and part-year workers, and it must show on your payslip | Not allowed |
| Carrying holiday over | By agreement, after family leave or sickness, or when your employer failed you | The same routes, since 1 January 2024 |
| Deadline to go to a tribunal | Normally 6 months less a day from the leave or pay date, extended for Acas conciliation | Normally 3 months less a day from the leave or pay date, extended for Labour Relations Agency conciliation |
| Employer's holiday records | Kept for 6 years, since 6 April 2026 | No such rule in the regulations |
The 6-month deadline applies where your leave should have started, or your pay was due, on or after 1 October 2026. Before that date it was 3 months.
What to do if you're refused holiday or told it's gone
Start with your contract or written statement: your leave year, whether bank holidays count inside your allowance, and any clause on notice or carrying holiday over. Ask in writing, and keep whatever comes back. Since 6 April 2026, employers in England, Scotland and Wales have had to keep holiday records for six years, so ask for yours. If talking doesn't fix it, raise a formal grievance.
The Fair Work Agency won't enforce holiday pay before April 2027, so for now Acas is the route. In England, Scotland and Wales, an employment tribunal claim has to start with early conciliation. Contact Acas within six months less a day of when your leave should have started or your holiday pay was due, for dates from 1 October 2026. For earlier dates, it's three months less a day. In Northern Ireland, normally contact the Labour Relations Agency within three months less a day. Conciliation extends the deadline for filing the tribunal claim.
The law in Great Britain also protects you while you push. Your employer can't treat you worse for refusing to give up a holiday right. It also can't penalise you for alleging a breach or bringing proceedings in good faith. If you're an employee dismissed for refusing to give up your holiday, the dismissal is automatically unfair, and there's no minimum length of service for that claim. Our guide to unfair dismissal explains how those claims work.
Most holiday disputes never need a solicitor. Employment solicitors earn their fee once you've been dismissed or a lot of back pay is at stake.
Before you raise it with your employer
- Find your leave year's start and end dates in your contract or written statement.
- Work out your statutory minimum from your working pattern, then add any extra days your contract gives.
- Check whether your contract counts bank holidays inside your allowance or on top of it.
- Look for a clause on notice, Christmas closure or carrying holiday over.
- Put your holiday request, or your question about lost days, in writing and keep the reply.
- Write down the date your leave should have started or your holiday pay was due, because the deadline runs from it.
We're not your lawyer. If a holiday dispute has become a dismissal or a large back-pay claim, get advice on your own facts before you file anything.
Frequently asked questions
Does 28 days holiday include bank holidays?
It can. The law gives you 5.6 weeks, and your employer may count bank holidays inside it, so a full-timer in England could get 20 days to choose plus 8 bank holidays. Some employers give them on top instead. Your contract or written statement says which. You've no legal right to have the bank holiday off.
How many days holiday do you get on a 4 day week?
At least 22.4 days a year, which is 4 times 5.6. On long days, count in hours. Working 37.5 hours over four days gives 210 hours, which GOV.UK's calculator turns into 9 hours 23 minutes for each day off. Your employer can round a part day up but never down.
Can my employer make me take holiday at Christmas?
Yes. Your employer can tell you to use holiday on set days, including a Christmas closure, as long as the notice reaches you before a date twice the length of the leave ahead. For a closure on 29, 30 and 31 December 2026, that's by Tuesday 22 December. Your contract can set different rules.
Can I carry over unused holiday to next year?
Only some of it, unless something stopped you. By agreement, regular-hours workers on a five-day week can carry up to 8 days. For irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain, the agreement sets the amount. Holiday lost to sickness, family leave or an employer who never warned you carries over by law, each with its own limits.
Do you still build up holiday when you're off sick or on maternity leave?
Yes. Holiday keeps building through sick leave and maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave. If family leave stops you using it, all unused statutory holiday carries forward. Sickness carries up to four weeks, used within 18 months of the leave year's end. Irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain carry all holiday built up within that time limit. Your employer can't force holiday during sickness.
Do zero hours workers get holiday?
Yes. In England, Scotland and Wales, your paid hours must be wholly or mostly variable under your contract for the irregular-hours rules. You then build up 12.07% of hours worked each pay period. A 30-hour week earns 4 hours. Your employer may pay holiday pay with your wages, adding 12.07% shown separately on your payslip. You still earn time off. Northern Ireland has no set rate, and nidirect says you get paid time off for every hour you work.
Can my employer pay me instead of letting me take holiday?
Not for your statutory 5.6 weeks while you're still in the job. It can only be swapped for money when you leave. Your employer must then pay for unused holiday that hasn't already been covered by rolled-up pay. Extra holiday your contract gives can follow different rules if your contract says so.
Is holiday entitlement different in Scotland or Northern Ireland?
Scotland follows the same law as England and Wales, so only the bank holidays differ: usually nine, and ten in 2026. Northern Ireland has its own regulations with the same 5.6 weeks and notice rules, no 12.07% rate for irregular hours, and ten bank holidays. Normally, contact the Labour Relations Agency within three months less a day of when your leave should have started or your holiday pay was due. Conciliation extends the tribunal filing deadline.