Guide
Irregular hours holiday pay: the 12.07% rule
Updated
UK holiday arithmetic's biggest change in a decade applies to leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. It governs casual, term-time, zero hours and seasonal staff.
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How this calculator works
- 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.
Who the rule catches
gov.uk defines an irregular hours worker in relation to a leave year as one where "the number of paid hours that they will work in each pay period during the term of their contract in that year is, under the terms of their contract, wholly or mostly variable".
A part-year worker is one who "under the terms of their contract, they are required to work only part of that year and there are periods within that year (during the term of the contract) of at least a week which they are not required to work and for which they are not paid".
Two things in those definitions do the work, and both are easy to miss. The test is applied per leave year, not once at hiring. And it turns on the terms of the contract, not on what actually happened. Somebody whose contract fixes their hours does not become an irregular hours worker because a quiet quarter cut their shifts.
The calculation
The rule replaced a calculation that had been wrong in a Supreme Court's opinion. For these workers it governs, and the multiplication above does not.
Accrual is 12.07% of actual hours worked in a pay period. gov.uk gives the reason for the number rather than leaving it a constant. 12.07% "is the proportion of statutory annual leave in relation to the working weeks of each year": 5.6 weeks over 46.4 weeks.
The consequence worth internalising is that entitlement here is measured in hours, not days. A worker who did 40 hours in a pay period has accrued 4.83 hours of leave in that period. Converting that to days needs a day length, and the day length is a presentational choice rather than a statutory one.
12.07% holiday pay: rolled-up pay
For the same group, holiday pay may be rolled up. gov.uk describes the method as "12.07% of a worker's total pay", the same proportion applied to money instead of hours.
Rolled-up pay is an option for these workers, not a default for everyone. Applying it to a regular hours worker does not become lawful because it is administratively easier.
What still applies
The 5.6 weeks ceiling has not moved, and neither has the general position that bank holidays are not a separate statutory entitlement.
Accrual during sickness and statutory leave is handled separately. It uses an average of hours worked over a 52 week relevant period, not the hours actually worked in the absent period. If your workforce includes irregular hours staff who take long sickness absences, read that calculation in full before you rely on a spreadsheet.