Part-time holiday calculator

5.6 weeks of their own week

A part-time worker in the United Kingdom gets the same statutory holiday as a full-time worker, measured in weeks. The minimum is 5.6 weeks. The week is their week. Someone who works three days gets 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days. Someone who works five days gets 28. The result is capped at 28 days, so a six-day week does not become 33.6 days of statutory leave. Part-time is not a reduced legal right. It is the same number of weeks, and the weeks are shorter.

For a pattern of five days or fewer, multiplying by 5.6 lands on the same number as a share of the 28-day full-time figure. Three fifths of 28 is also 16.8. Four fifths of 28 is 22.4, and 4 × 5.6 is 22.4. That coincidence stops at the cap. Six fifths of 28 is 33.6, and the statute does not award 33.6. Apply 5.6 to their own days, then cap the full-year figure at 28. This page shows both the uncapped multiplication and the capped figure so you can see the cap bite.

Hours follow the day they actually work. A three-day week of six-hour days is 16.8 days, and it is also 16.8 × 6 = 100.8 hours. Booking the leave in hours matters when one of their days is shorter than the others, but this calculator assumes each working day is the length you enter. If Tuesday is four hours and Saturday is ten, do not average them into one day and then forget which day they booked. A day's leave should match the day they would have worked.

Bank holidays and days they never work

Bank holidays can sit inside the 5.6 weeks. They are not an extra week unless the contract says they are given on top. A full-time team that closes on bank holidays and counts those closures as leave is using up part of the 28 days. A part-timer who does not work Mondays should not be charged a Monday bank holiday they would not have worked. Their entitlement is in their own working days. If a bank holiday falls on a Wednesday and Wednesday is one of their days, that day can come out of the 16.8, where the contract treats bank holidays as leave.

This page does not list England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland bank holidays, and it does not remove them from the total. Add that judgement after you have the statutory weeks. If the contract gives bank holidays on top of the 5.6, the figure here is still only the minimum. Shiftbrook can record an allowance with bank holidays inside the weeks, or with them added on top. The setting is yours. The calculator does not switch it.

Someone who joins or leaves during the year

For a regular pattern, a part year is a share of the capped full-year entitlement. This page uses months. Six months is half. Each month is one twelfth. It does not count the exact number of calendar days, and it does not apply the cap after the pro-rata in a way that would revive the uncapped 33.6. The cap is applied to the full year first. Half of a six-day week is half of 28, which is 14 days, not half of 33.6.

GOV.UK allows the entitlement to be rounded up. It should not be rounded down. A 16.8 day year can be recorded as 17 if you book in half days, and this page shows that next half day beside the plain 16.8. Rounding up is a choice about the balance. It is not a second statutory week. Rounding 16.8 down to 16 would cut the entitlement, and the guidance says not to do that.

The first year of a regular job is often described as building up one twelfth at a time. The months field is that kind of share. It is not the irregular-hours method, and it is not a substitute for paying in lieu of untaken leave when someone leaves. Pay for untaken statutory leave is a holiday-pay question. The days here are only the days.

Regular part-time is not part-year, and not irregular

A person who works Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week has regular hours. They are part-time. They are not, just because of that, an irregular-hours worker or a part-year worker. Leave years from 1 April 2024 accrue at 12.07% of hours worked for irregular-hours and part-year workers. A steady three-day week stays on 5.6 weeks. Running both calculations and adding them double-counts the same leave.

Part-year work is different. GOV.UK describes a part-year worker as someone required to work only part of the year, with unpaid weeks in between. Term-time work can fall into that, depending on the contract. A term-time contract that still pays the normal week's pay through the school holidays may already be providing the paid weeks. If those paid non-working weeks add up to at least 5.6 weeks at the normal rate, that can cover the statutory paid leave. If the unpaid gaps are real, the April 2024 accrual method is the one to read, on the holiday entitlement calculator, not this days-per-week sum.

Compressed hours are another trap. Four longer days can still be a full-time week of hours. The holiday is 4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days, because they have four working days, even if the hours match a five-day colleague. You do not give them 28 calendar days of leave and also the shorter week. The day they take off is one of their longer days.

Pay, and what the rota records

This page stops at days and hours. Holiday pay for a regular part-time week is a week's pay for that week, not a slice of a full-time salary, unless the contract happens to be written that way. The holiday pay calculator is the estimate for the money, and it has the same limit: it uses the figures you type. Neither page calculates tax.

In Shiftbrook you set the allowance on the person, in weeks or in days, including a part-year start. Leave is requested in hours and shown on the rota, so a shift is not published on top of a day that is already off. The product does not calculate holiday pay. Approved hours download as a CSV for whoever runs payroll. Use the number on this page as the statutory starting point, then match it to the contract before you save the allowance.

Three days a week, six hours a day, full year

1. Days each week: 3. Hours in a working day: 6. Months: 12.
2. 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days. That is under 28, so the cap does not reduce it.
3. Hours of leave are 16.8 × 6 = 100.8. A five-day colleague's statutory year is 28 days. 16.8 is not 28.

Six days a week, then half a year

1. Days each week: 6. Hours in a day: 8. Months: 6.
2. 6 × 5.6 = 33.6, which the cap brings to 28 for a full year. Half a year is half of 28, which is 14 days.
3. Hours are 14 × 8 = 112. They are not half of 33.6 days.

Four compressed days

1. Days each week: 4. Hours in a day: 10. Full year.
2. 4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days, and 224 hours. The half-day line rounds 22.4 up to 22.5 if you book half days.
3. Do not also award a fifth day's leave because a full-time colleague works five shorter days.