How pro rata holiday entitlement is worked out
Almost every UK worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. For someone working five days a week that is 28 days, which is also the cap, so working six or seven days does not increase it. Employers can give more, and many do, but they cannot give less.
Pro rata means giving someone the share of that entitlement which matches the work they do. Which sum you use depends on how they work.
Part-time staff working set days each week
Multiply the days they work each week by 5.6. Someone working three days a week gets 16.8 days, and someone working four gets 22.4.
If you give more than the statutory minimum, use the ratio instead: the full-time entitlement multiplied by their days divided by a full-timer’s days. On 33 days full-time, three days a week gives 33 × (3 ÷ 5), which is 19.8 days.
Part days are normal and you do not have to round them away. If you do round, round up. Rounding down would take someone below their statutory entitlement.
Someone joining or leaving part way through the leave year
Work out the share of the leave year they are there for. Someone on 28 days joining on 1 August, in a leave year starting 1 January, is there for 153 of the 365 days, so they get 28 × (153 ÷ 365), which is 11.74 days.
In someone’s first year of employment, that figure does not all have to be available on day one. Holiday can build up at one twelfth of the annual entitlement at the start of each month, rounded up to the next half day. On 28 days a year that is 2.5 days a month, until they reach the total for the leave year. It is not a separate or larger entitlement, it is the same figure becoming available month by month.
For leavers, work out what they accrued by their last day and take off what they have already taken. Anything left is paid in the final payslip. If they have taken more than they accrued, you can only recover it from final pay if the contract says so.
Irregular hours and part-year workers
This one changed. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular hours and part-year workers build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually work in each pay period, rather than being given a fixed number of days at the start of the year.
The 12.07% is not arbitrary. It is 5.6 weeks of holiday divided by the other 46.4 weeks of the year. Someone working 160 hours in a month builds up 19 hours and 19 minutes, recorded as 19 hours.
Note that this method rounds differently from days. Here the regulations round to the nearest hour: a part hour of less than 30 minutes is treated as zero, and 30 minutes or more counts as a full hour. That is the one place where rounding down is allowed, and it only applies to this accrual method.
Part-year workers are the ones people miss. A term-time worker on a permanent contract who is not paid during the holidays counts here, so their entitlement is worked out on hours rather than as a flat 5.6 weeks.
You can also pay this as rolled-up holiday pay, an extra 12.07% on every payslip instead of paying when leave is taken. It has to be itemised separately and staff have to be told it is included. Rolled-up pay was unlawful before April 2024, so older guidance on this is out of date. If your contracts give more holiday than the statutory minimum, the percentage has to be adjusted upwards to match.
Bank holidays and pro rata
There is no automatic right to paid time off on a bank holiday. They can come out of the 5.6 weeks or be given on top, and the contract decides which.
Part-time staff are where this causes arguments. Most bank holidays fall on a Monday, so someone who works Mondays gets far more of them than someone who works Wednesdays and Thursdays, for no reason other than their working pattern. The usual fix is to give part-time staff a pro rata bank holiday allowance they can book when they like, rather than the days themselves.
Whichever way you do it, write it into the contract and apply it the same way for everyone.
Keeping track of it
Working out an entitlement once is straightforward. Keeping it right across a year of bookings, changes to hours, starters and leavers is where it gets messy, particularly when balances live in a spreadsheet that only one person updates.
Our absence management software holds each person’s entitlement and counts it down as leave is approved, so staff can see their own balance and managers can see who is off before they agree to anything. Requests and approvals can be done from the online holiday booking system.
Whatever you use to track it, keep the records. Holiday and pay records have to be kept for years rather than months, which our guide to holiday pay record keeping rules covers.
