Guide
Carryover leave: the 8 day rule and its exceptions
Updated
Carry-over is where a tracker earns its keep. What matters is the balance at your leave year's end, not on 31 December, and how much of it survives.
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- The statutory floor is 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year. gov.uk states that "almost all people classed as workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year". It adds that "most workers who work a 5-day week must receive at least 28 days' paid annual leave a year" (gov.uk).
- The 28 day ceiling is applied to the regular hours figure. gov.uk states that "statutory paid holiday entitlement is limited to 28 days". So a six or seven day week does not produce more than 28 days of statutory leave (gov.uk).
- Part-time entitlement is days a week multiplied by 5.6, the calculation gov.uk and Acas both work. A three day week gives "at least 16.8 days' leave a year (3 x 5.6)" (Acas).
- Irregular hours and part-year workers accrue 12.07% of actual hours worked in a pay period, for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. That percentage is 5.6 weeks divided by the 46.4 working weeks of a year (gov.uk).
- Bank holidays are treated as a setting, not a fact, because they are one. gov.uk: "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" (gov.uk).
- The carry-over figure uses the general rule that "workers can normally carry over a maximum of 8 days into the next leave year, with the agreement of their employer". Statutory family leave is treated differently and is not modelled here (gov.uk).
- This tracks the statutory minimum for a full leave year. It does not model contractual leave above the floor, service-related uplifts, leave in the first year of a job under an employer's accrual scheme, or a leave year part-completed. Where the contract is more generous, the contract governs and this figure is the legal floor beneath it.
- Converting accrued hours to days uses the normal day length you enter. That conversion is a presentation choice, not a statutory rule: the entitlement of an irregular hours worker is measured in hours.
Can you carry over holiday? The general rule
gov.uk states that "workers can normally carry over a maximum of 8 days into the next leave year, with the agreement of their employer".
Two conditions sit in that sentence: it is a maximum, not an entitlement, and it needs agreement. An employer who declines is not doing anything unlawful in the ordinary case. So a leave year ending with a large untaken balance is a management problem rather than a legal one.
Family leave is different
Some workers cannot take their statutory holiday because they are on maternity or other family related leave. For them, gov.uk states that "an employer must allow" them to carry over all their holiday entitlement to the following leave year.
That is an obligation rather than a discretion, and it covers the whole entitlement rather than eight days of it. It is the single carry-over rule most often got wrong, and getting it wrong takes leave away from the group least able to argue about it at the time.
Sickness
Long-term sickness has its own treatment and it is not the eight day rule. Where a worker has been unable to take leave because of sickness absence, carry-over is permitted on different terms and over a longer horizon.
If you are handling a specific case, read the position in full rather than applying the general maximum. Here the general rule and the correct answer point in different directions.
Practical consequence for a tracker
A tracker that only reports the current year's balance will tell somebody they have nine days left in March. It says nothing about the fact that eight of them are the maximum that can move.
The useful figure late in a leave year is the balance capped at the carry-over maximum, which is what the tool above reports alongside the raw balance. The difference between the two is the leave that will be lost if nobody books it.