Annual Leave

Statutory annual leave in the UK is 5.6 weeks. How entitlement accrues, how to calculate it for part-timers and when leave can be carried over.

This article will discuss everything you need to know about annual leave, including how to use it and how to get the most out of it.

What is annual leave?

Annual leave is the paid time off your employees take to rest, reset, and stay healthy over the year.

Annual leave vs vacation vs PTO – key concepts

In many countries, annual leave is a legal right 👉 a minimum number of paid days off each year, often called holiday entitlement (UK, EU) or paid annual leave. In US and some other markets, people more often say vacation days or talk about a PTO policy (paid time off), but the idea is similar: paid time away from work.

A PTO bank usually bundles different types of time off (holiday, personal days, sometimes sick leave) into one pot, which employees use as they wish. Some companies experiment with unlimited PTO, but research and HR commentary now show that employees often take no more or even less time off under these schemes if the culture isn’t supportive.

Legally, the UK and EU treat annual leave as a health and safety protection, not a perk: for example, EU working time rules require at least 4 weeks of paid annual leave for every worker, pro-rated for part-time staff.

Legal minimums in key markets

Let's look at a quick benchmark of statutory annual leave so you can sense-check your current policy.

📊Comparison table – Statutory annual leave highlights: UK vs US vs EU:

Region	Legal minimum paid annual leave	Typical employer practice (full-time)	2025 compliance highlight
UK	5.6 weeks (28 days for 5-day week), pro-rated for part-time Gov.uk, 2025	Many employers offer 25–30+ days including bank holidays, sometimes more with service	New 2024 rules for irregular-hours/part-year workers: 12.07% accrual and optional rolled-up pay
US (federal)	No statutory minimum for paid vacation or PTO	Commonly 10–20 paid days plus public holidays, often via a PTO bank; entitlement rises with tenure	State laws may restrict “use-it-or-lose-it” and regulate payout of unused vacation on termination
EU (Directive)	At least 4 weeks’ paid annual leave, pro-rated for part-time	Many countries go beyond 4 weeks, especially when adding public holidays and contractual leave	National law builds on the Directive; employers must track working time and leave accurately

How annual leave accrues and is calculated

This section gives you simple formulas so you can sanity-check your holiday balances.

Fixed hours and pro-rata for part-time staff

For regular hours in the UK, the statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks per year. You can turn that into days with a very simple formula:

Formula (days):

Annual leave (days) = Days worked per week × 5.6

If you prefer to work in hours (useful for shifts of different lengths):

Formula (hours):

Annual leave (hours) = Weekly contracted hours × 5.6

So if someone works 37.5 hours per week on a standard 5-day pattern:

37.5 × 5.6 = 210 hours of statutory leave.

Examples of statutory minimum leave for fixed days per week :

Days worked per week	Statutory minimum days of leave (5.6 weeks)
5	28
4	22.4
3	16.8
2	11.2

Irregular-hours and part-year workers (UK 12.07% method)

From leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, UK law allows a simple percentage for holiday for irregular-hours and part-year workers. Core idea: they build up paid leave based on a percentage of the hours they actually work.

Formula (accrual per pay period):

Holiday hours accrued = Hours worked in the period × 12.07%

Example:

Worker does 80 hours in a month.
Holiday = 80 × 0.1207 ≈ 9.66 hours of paid leave.

The 12.07% rate is set in the Employment Rights (Amendment…) Regulations 2023 to match 5.6 weeks’ leave over a full year of work. The government also allows rolled-up holiday pay for these workers if it is clearly shown on payslips and paid at the correct “normal pay” rate.

Accrual during probation, sickness and family leave

Annual leave normally starts accruing from day one, even during the probation period. In the UK and EU, employees also keep accruing statutory holiday while on sickness absence and on statutory family leave (for example maternity or shared parental leave). If they cannot use this leave in the current holiday year, they often have the right to carry it over to a later period, within limits.

Pro-rata on joiners and leavers (quick method)

For mid-year starters and leavers, the basic UK method is:

Work out the full-year entitlement for the role.
Work out the fraction of the holiday year the person will be employed.
Multiply full-year entitlement by that fraction, then round in line with your policy/local law.

👉 Example: holiday year 1 Jan–31 Dec, entitlement 28 days, employee joins on 1 July. They work half the year, so they get roughly 14 days (28 × 6/12).

Managing annual leave in real life (coverage, fairness, and culture)

Here we focus on the day-to-day juggling act: who can be off, when, and how to keep it fair.

Setting clear notice periods, approval rules, and blackout dates

Your annual leave or PTO policy should answer three questions fast: how to book, how early, and how decisions are made. CIPD recommends clear written rules on notice periods, how conflicts are resolved, and how carry-over works to avoid inconsistency and discrimination claims.

✅ Micro-checklist: what your policy should cover

Minimum notice to book leave.
Who approves requests (and backups).
How you decide when too many people are off.
Any blackout dates or shutdown periods.
Rules on carry-over and expiry (“use it or lose it”).

Avoiding bottlenecks: rota planning for peak seasons

Most problems happen when everyone wants the same weeks off. For seasonal sectors like retail, hospitality and healthcare, map out peak periods and set hard limits on how many people in each role can be away at once. Guidance for UK employers stresses using transparent rules (rotation, first-come-first-served, or priority for parents at certain times) to avoid complaints and keep cover safe.

You can also steer people towards off-peak holidays by encouraging early planning and showing which weeks are already busy. That cuts last-minute refusals, overtime spikes and burnout for the people left on rota.

Encouraging employees to actually take leave (with usage data)

Recent UK data shows employees are not using all their annual leave. One large analysis found an almost 8% drop in days taken between 2022 and 2023, with many workers leaving holiday on the table.

Timetastic’s 2024 statistics also show that a significant share of workers end each year with unused allowance, often due to workload pressure or a “always on” culture.

Practical ideas for managers:

Ask about holiday plans in one-to-ones and team meetings.
Monitor who is hoarding leave and give early nudges.
Model good behaviour yourself: take your own leave and avoid emailing when you’re off.

How Shiftbase helps you manage annual leave without losing your mind

Shiftbase gives you one place to manage holiday balances, absence types, policies and contracts, instead of scattered spreadsheets. Each employee has a clear absence overview with their current balance, carried-over days, and approved or pending requests, so you can see at a glance who has what left.

You can configure accrual factors (for example, days or hours per year), define statutory vs extra-contractual leave, and use “time off balance corrections” to tidy legacy errors or imports. Employees can also check their own balances via the My absence page and mobile app, which reduces “How much holiday do I have left?” messages.

3-step setup for clean balances in Shiftbase

Define your absence policies (statutory, additional, PTO types).
Link policies and accrual factors to each contract.
Import or correct opening balances, and let Shiftbase handle the rest.

👉 If you want to move from “firefighting holiday requests” to data-driven leave management, you can try Shiftbase free for 14 days and test absence policies, approvals and reporting with your own team