Guide
Bank holidays and annual leave: inside the 5.6 weeks or on top?
Updated
This is the most common source of a leave balance that two people compute differently, and it is not a hard question once the starting point is right. There is no statutory right to a paid bank holiday in the UK. Everything after that is what your contract says.
The statutory position
gov.uk is direct about it: "bank or public holidays do not have to be given as paid leave", and "an employer can choose to include bank holidays as part of a worker's statutory annual leave".
So the eight days that England and Wales usually observe are not an entitlement standing outside the 5.6 weeks. They are either counted inside it or given in addition to it, and the contract decides which.
Why it changes the number so much
For a five day week, counting eight bank holidays inside the entitlement leaves 20 days for the worker to choose. Giving them on top leaves 28. That is a difference of eight days a year for one line in a contract.
Both are lawful. Only one of them is what your staff think they have, and the disagreement usually surfaces in December when somebody tries to book the last week of the year.
Part-time staff and the days the holiday lands on
Where bank holidays are counted inside the entitlement, a part-time worker whose days never include a Monday loses very little, and one who works Mondays only loses a great deal. That asymmetry is why many employers pro-rate bank holidays across the week rather than applying them as they fall.
The safe practical test is whether a part-time worker ends up with less than days-per-week multiplied by 5.6 once bank holidays are accounted for. If they do, the arrangement has taken them below the statutory floor, whatever the policy says.
What to write down
One sentence in the written statement settles it for good: whether the entitlement is inclusive or exclusive of bank holidays, and what happens when one falls on a non-working day.
The statement of employment particulars has to cover holiday entitlement anyway, and it must be given on or before the first day. Making it explicit costs nothing at that point and is very hard to fix afterwards.