How do I work out my holiday entitlement?

If you are an employee, your contract of employment should specify your entitlement to annual holidays. This can only 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.  

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 off a year (3 days x 5.6).  

Many people have contractual entitlements that are much 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.