How to Calculate Holiday Entitlement for Hourly & Part-Time Workers (UK, 2026)

The Temporra Team · 16 July 2026 · 8 min read · More resources

Holiday entitlement is easy for a Monday-to-Friday office team and genuinely fiddly for everyone else — the part-timers, the weekend crew, the casuals who did 14 hours last week and 40 the week before. This guide walks UK employers through the statutory minimum, the pro-rata sums for part-time staff, the 12.07% accrual method for irregular hours, and the rolled-up holiday pay rules — with worked examples you can copy.

The statutory minimum: 5.6 weeks

Almost every worker in the UK — employees, part-timers, casuals and most zero-hours staff — is legally entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday per year. What a "week" means depends on what that person's working week actually looks like, which is why the same entitlement produces different numbers of days for different people.

For someone working 5 days a week, the sum is 5 × 5.6 = 28 days a year. That is also the ceiling: statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days, so someone working 6 days a week still gets 28 days as their statutory minimum, not 33.6. Employers can of course offer more than the minimum in the contract — many do — but they can never offer less.

Pro-rata for part-time workers: days × 5.6

Part-time workers get the same 5.6 weeks, pro-rated to their own week. The calculation is one line: days worked per week × 5.6.

• 3 days a week: 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days of paid holiday a year.
• 4 days a week: 4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days.
• 2 days a week: 2 × 5.6 = 11.2 days.

Notice the decimals — 16.8 days is 16.8 days, and it is normal (and safest) to keep the fraction rather than rounding down. When a part-timer takes a day off, one day comes off their balance; a half-day takes half. If someone works the same total hours spread unevenly, it is often cleaner to run the whole calculation in hours instead: average weekly hours × 5.6.

Which calculation applies to which worker?

Irregular hours and casual workers: the 12.07% method

For casual and zero-hours staff there is no fixed week to multiply, so entitlement is accrued from the hours actually worked. The magic number is 12.07%, and it is not arbitrary: a year contains 52 weeks, of which 5.6 are holiday, leaving 46.4 working weeks. Divide 5.6 by 46.4 and you get 12.07% — holiday expressed as a percentage of working time.

The method: at the end of each pay period, take the hours the person actually worked and multiply by 12.07%. That is the holiday they accrued in that period. Here is a casual site labourer over three months:

*Calculated on the full 286 hours (286 × 12.07% = 34.52); the monthly rows are rounded, so they sum to 34.51.

So after a busy quarter this worker has banked roughly 34.5 hours of paid holiday. The obvious catch: the method is only as accurate as the hours going into it. If casual hours live on scraps of paper or in someone's memory, the 12.07% sum is built on sand — which is why accurate clock-in records matter so much for this group in particular. Our guide to tracking employee hours covers how to get that foundation right.

Rolled-up holiday pay (leave years from 1 April 2024)

Traditionally, holiday pay is paid when the holiday is taken. For irregular-hours and part-year workers, there is now a second lawful option: for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, employers may use rolled-up holiday pay — adding an uplift of 12.07% to the worker's pay in each pay period, instead of paying them later when they take leave.

In plain terms: a casual worker who earned £1,000 of normal pay in a period would receive an extra £120.70 of holiday pay in the same payslip. Two conditions matter:

• The rolled-up amount must be shown as a separate, clearly itemised line on the payslip — it cannot be quietly folded into the hourly rate.
• It only applies to irregular-hours and part-year workers. Staff with regular hours must still be paid when they actually take their leave.

Workers paid this way are still entitled to take their time off — rolling up changes when the money arrives, not whether the rest happens.

Do bank holidays count?

A common surprise: there is no separate statutory right to time off on bank holidays in the UK. An employer can count bank holidays towards the 5.6-week minimum, give them on top of it, or require staff to work them and take the leave another time — whatever the contract says. For a 5-day worker, "20 days plus 8 bank holidays" and "28 days including bank holidays" both satisfy the statutory minimum. For part-timers, take care that a "plus bank holidays" policy does not accidentally favour people whose working days happen to fall on Mondays, where most bank holidays sit — a pro-rated bank-holiday allowance is the fairer route.

What records should an employer keep?

If entitlement is ever disputed — by a worker, a tribunal or an inspector — the employer with records wins the argument. As a minimum, keep:

• Hours worked per pay period, per worker — the raw input for every accrual sum.
• Holiday accrued, with the calculation method noted (days × 5.6, hours × 5.6, or 12.07%).
• Holiday requested and taken, with dates and approvals.
• Holiday pay paid — itemised separately on payslips where it is rolled up.
• Leave-year dates and any carry-over agreed.

For site-based teams, a consistent record starts with a consistent timesheet — our free construction timesheet template is a reasonable paper starting point if you are not ready for software yet.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Giving everyone a flat 28 days. It short-changes nobody but over-provides for part-timers and, more dangerously, gets quietly swapped for "28 days pro-rated by feel" — which does short-change people. Run the actual sum for each working pattern.
• Not tracking casual hours. The 12.07% method needs real hours. Estimates and round numbers mean the accrual is wrong every single period, and the errors compound across the year.
• Forgetting overtime patterns. Where overtime is regular, holiday pay should generally reflect the worker's normal earnings rather than a bare basic rate — a worker who routinely does 45 hours but is paid holiday as if they did 37.5 has a legitimate complaint. Check current guidance if overtime is a fixture of your rotas.
• Hiding rolled-up holiday pay in the rate. "Your £14 an hour includes holiday pay" without a separate itemised payslip line does not meet the requirement.
• Ignoring the leave year. The 1 April 2024 changes apply to leave years starting on or after that date — know when yours starts, and apply the right rules to it.

Where Temporra fits

Every calculation on this page has the same dependency: accurate hours. That is exactly what Temporra is built to provide for construction and hourly workforces. Workers clock in and out on site — on their own phone or a site kiosk, with PIN or face options — so the exact hours feed straight into timesheets. Leave and holiday management is built in, so accrual and time-off requests live next to the hours they are calculated from rather than in a separate spreadsheet. When it is time to pay, payroll-ready exports go to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks and BrightPay (see integrations), with CIS deduction support for construction teams paying subcontractors. Plans are on the pricing page, and there are more guides like this one on the blog.

FAQ

How much holiday is a part-time worker entitled to in the UK?
Multiply the days they work each week by 5.6. Someone working three days a week is entitled to 16.8 days of statutory paid holiday a year; someone on four days gets 22.4 days. The statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days, which is what a five-day worker receives.

What is the 12.07% holiday accrual method?
It converts the 5.6-week entitlement into a percentage of hours worked: 5.6 weeks of holiday divided by the 46.4 working weeks that remain gives 12.07%. An irregular-hours worker accrues holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually work in each pay period — so 100 hours worked accrues roughly 12 hours of paid holiday.

Is rolled-up holiday pay legal in the UK?
For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, rolled-up holiday pay is permitted for irregular-hours and part-year workers. The uplift must be shown as a separate, clearly itemised amount on each payslip rather than hidden inside the hourly rate. It is not permitted for workers with regular hours.

Do bank holidays count towards statutory holiday entitlement?
There is no separate statutory right to time off on bank holidays. An employer can count bank holidays towards the 5.6-week minimum, give them on top, or require work on them with leave taken at another time — whatever the contract says, as long as the overall statutory minimum is met.

What records should employers keep for holiday entitlement?
Keep hours worked per pay period, holiday accrued, holiday requested and taken, holiday pay paid (itemised separately if rolled up), the calculation method used and the leave-year dates. Accurate hours are the foundation — without them, a 12.07% calculation has nothing reliable to work from.

Ready to stop working out entitlement from guessed hours? Temporra turns clocked hours into accurate timesheets, keeps leave records in one place and produces payroll-ready exports automatically.

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