What Is Statutory Holiday Entitlement in the UK?
Statutory holiday entitlement is the minimum paid leave every eligible worker is legally entitled to. According to gov.uk’s holiday entitlement guidance, most workers who work a five-day week must receive at least 28 days’ paid annual leave per year. That’s the equivalent of 5.6 weeks. As the CIPD’s April 2026 guidance on annual leave and UK employment law confirms, 28 days is the legal floor — not a target.
You can choose to offer more than 28 days, and many employers do. But you cannot offer less, regardless of what an employment contract says. Any clause in a contract that gives an employee fewer than their statutory entitlement is unenforceable.
Does the 28-Day Entitlement Include Bank Holidays?
It can do — but it doesn’t have to. The 28-day statutory minimum can include bank holidays, meaning you could give employees 20 days plus 8 bank holidays and still meet the legal requirement. Alternatively, you can offer 28 days on top of bank holidays, which is more generous. Your employment contract should make this clear from day one to avoid confusion later.
Is 28 Days Annual Leave Including Bank Holidays?
Yes, 28 days can legally include bank holidays in the UK. There is no statutory right to paid leave on a bank holiday specifically. What matters is that the total paid leave adds up to at least 28 days. So if you give staff 20 days plus 8 bank holidays, that counts. Many employers offer more, but 28 days inclusive is the legal minimum.
This is a point of genuine confusion for a lot of founders and office managers. Some employees assume they get 28 days plus all bank holidays as a right. They don’t — unless their employment contract says so. It’s worth making your holiday policy explicit in your employee handbook so there’s no ambiguity when someone joins.
How to Calculate Holiday Entitlement for UK Employees
For a full-time employee working five days a week, the calculation is straightforward: 5.6 weeks multiplied by 5 days equals 28 days. But most small businesses don’t only employ full-time, Monday-to-Friday staff. Part-time workers, those on irregular hours, and new starters who join mid-year all need a different approach.
Pro Rata Holiday Entitlement for Part-Time Workers
Part-time employees are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks of annual leave as full-time staff — but calculated pro rata based on the days or hours they work. A worker on three days a week gets 5.6 multiplied by 3, which equals 16.8 days. You can round this up (you cannot round down). The same principle applies to hours-based workers: multiply 5.6 by their weekly hours to get their annual entitlement in hours.
How Much Annual Leave for 30 Hours a Week?
A worker doing 30 hours a week is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid leave, calculated in hours. That’s 5.6 multiplied by 30, giving 168 hours of annual leave per year. How you structure those hours across days is up to you, but the total entitlement in hours must be met. It’s worth recording this in hours rather than days to keep things accurate.
New starters who join part-way through your leave year are entitled to a pro rata portion of the annual entitlement for the remainder of that year. So someone joining halfway through your leave year gets half their full entitlement. Tracking this manually on a spreadsheet is where mistakes creep in — and those mistakes can be costly.
Holiday Pay: What Are You Required to Pay?
Holiday pay should reflect what an employee would normally earn. For workers with fixed hours and a regular salary, this is simple — they get their usual pay. But for workers with variable hours, commission, or regular overtime, the calculation is more involved.
Following reforms that came into force on 1 January 2024, the rules were updated to simplify matters for irregular-hours and part-year workers. The gov.uk guidance on holiday pay and entitlement reforms from 1 January 2024 sets out how accrual-based calculations now apply to these worker types. For most small businesses with salaried staff on regular hours, the day-to-day impact is limited — but it’s worth reading if you employ anyone on a zero-hours contract or term-time-only basis.
The key principle is that employees should not be financially worse off for taking their statutory leave. Paying only basic salary when someone regularly earns commission or overtime could leave you exposed.
Carrying Over Annual Leave: What the Rules Say
Workers should take their full leave entitlement within the leave year. In most cases, statutory leave cannot be carried over to the next year — the expectation is that it’s used or lost. However, there are exceptions. If an employee was unable to take leave because of sickness, maternity leave, or another statutory reason, they have the right to carry it over.
Since the 2024 reforms, workers who were prevented from taking leave due to their employer’s failure to give them a reasonable opportunity to do so can also carry leave forward. This is a real risk for small businesses where busy periods make it tempting to defer leave requests. If you’re consistently blocking or discouraging leave, you could find yourself with a significant liability at the end of the year.
The practical answer is to track leave actively throughout the year and flag when people have significant balances remaining. A leave management system does this automatically — no end-of-year surprises.
How to Use Annual Leave in 2026 in the UK
Employees request leave and employers can approve, decline, or ask them to take it at a specific time — provided notice requirements are met. In 2026, the process itself hasn’t changed, but more small businesses are moving away from email chains and spreadsheets toward dedicated leave management tools that handle requests, approvals, and balances automatically.
As an employer, you can require employees to take leave at certain times — for example, over Christmas or during a shutdown period. You can also refuse a leave request, but you must give the employee notice of refusal equal to at least as many days as the leave requested. These rules come from the Working Time Regulations 1998, and ACAS has useful guidance on applying them fairly.
For small businesses, the biggest practical challenge isn’t usually the rules themselves — it’s keeping track of who has taken what, who has what remaining, and making sure requests don’t leave you short-staffed. That’s where having a central system pays for itself quickly.
Is 25 Days of Annual Leave Enough?
Legally, yes — 25 days plus 8 bank holidays (33 total) exceeds the 28-day statutory minimum comfortably. Whether it’s enough to attract and retain staff is a different question. In competitive sectors, 25 days plus bank holidays is fairly standard for full-time roles in the UK. Going below that, even if legal, may make it harder to hire.
For small businesses and startups, the honest answer is that your leave offering needs to be competitive enough to attract the people you want. The FSB’s key dates guide for small business owners in 2026 is a useful reference for staying on top of employment law changes that could affect your offering throughout the year.
Managing Annual Leave Without Spreadsheets
If you’re still tracking holiday entitlement on a spreadsheet, you already know the problems. Formulas break. Balances get miscalculated. Someone books leave that wasn’t properly approved and nobody notices until they’re already off. And when you’re managing pro rata entitlements, part-time staff, and mid-year starters, the complexity compounds quickly.
This is exactly the kind of admin that KanduHR is built to handle. Our time off management features let employees submit leave requests in a click, managers approve from their dashboard, and everyone sees their up-to-date balance in real time. Half-days, department views, and allowance tracking are all built in — no configuration headaches.
For teams without a dedicated HR person, this matters. You don’t need to remember the rules for pro rata calculations or manually update a spreadsheet every time someone joins or leaves. KanduHR handles it, so you don’t have to.
Annual Leave Policy for Startups Without HR
If you don’t have an HR manager, your annual leave policy still needs to exist. At minimum, it should cover:
- Your leave year dates (when it starts and ends)
- Total entitlement, and whether bank holidays are included
- How to request leave and the notice required
- Your carry-over policy
- How leave is calculated for part-time or pro rata employees
This policy should live somewhere every employee can access it — ideally in your employee handbook, stored centrally rather than buried in an email thread. KanduHR includes document management and a company posts and news feed, so your policies are always findable and up to date.
One Affordable Place to Manage It All
Annual leave is just one part of people management. Once your headcount starts growing, you also need to think about performance reviews, onboarding, employment contracts, right to work checks, and keeping your team informed. Doing that across multiple disconnected tools — or worse, more spreadsheets — creates more admin, not less.
KanduHR brings everything into one place at a price that makes sense for small and growing teams. Our simple, transparent pricing starts at £20 per month for up to 10 employees, with everything included in one plan — no hidden fees, no add-ons, no feature gates. And your accountant gets unlimited free access, which is one less thing to think about at payroll time.
If you’ve been through the free trial cycle with platforms that lock their best features behind expensive paywalls, KanduHR is a different experience. Everything is included from day one. Set up takes minutes, not weeks. And it’s built specifically for small and growing teams — not stripped down from an enterprise tool that was never designed for a business your size.
Ready to ditch the spreadsheets and manage annual leave properly? Start your free trial with KanduHR today — no credit card required.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I include bank holidays in the 28-day statutory entitlement?
Yes. UK law does not give employees a specific right to paid leave on bank holidays. The statutory minimum of 28 days can include bank holidays, provided the total paid leave adds up to at least 28 days per year. Your employment contract should state clearly whether bank holidays are included in or on top of the annual leave entitlement to avoid disputes.
What happens to unused annual leave when an employee leaves?
When an employee leaves, they are entitled to be paid for any accrued but unused statutory annual leave. This is calculated based on how much of the leave year has passed and how much leave they have taken. You should not require employees to forfeit unused leave on termination — doing so may breach the Working Time Regulations 1998. Check ACAS guidance if you’re unsure how to calculate a final payment.
Do part-time employees get the same holiday entitlement as full-time staff?
Part-time employees are entitled to the same 5.6 weeks of annual leave as full-time staff, but calculated pro rata based on the hours or days they work. A part-time employee cannot legally receive a lower rate of holiday entitlement per hour or day worked than a comparable full-time employee. Treating part-time staff less favourably on leave entitlement could constitute unlawful discrimination under the Part-Time Workers Regulations 2000.
