How do I work out my holiday entitlement?

Your employer must set out your holiday entitlement in your contract of employment or separate statement of employment particulars. This must be the same as, or better than, the legal minimum explained below.   

The law gives all workers, including part-time workers, agency workers and 'zero-hours' contract workers, a minimum annual leave entitlement of 5.6 weeks from their first day of employment. This includes bank and public holidays. 

You can work out how many days off you should get by multiplying the number of days you work each week by 5.6.   

For example, workers who are contracted to work five days a week must get at least 28 days off a year (5 days x 5.6) including public holidays. If you are contracted to work three days a week, your leave entitlement will be 16.8 days a year (3 days x 5.6).   

Many people have a contractual entitlement that is better than the statutory minimum. The average full-time worker in Great Britain gets 25 days of annual leave plus eight bank holidays. If there is a recognised trade union in the workplace, workers tend to do better than those in workplaces where there is no trade union presence. Comparing like-for-like across occupations, industries, and public and private sectors, the average union member gets two days more leave per annum than comparable non-members.   

You can use the GOV.UK holiday entitlement calculator to work out your basic statutory holiday entitlement.