How much holiday am I actually entitled to?

The single most common mistake here is converting to days too early. The entitlement is 5.6 weeks of whatever a week looks like for you. Once you work in weeks, the part-time case, the compressed-hours case and the four-on-four-off case all fall out of the same arithmetic instead of needing separate rules.

Step by step

1. Start from 5.6 weeks, not from a number of days.This is the statutory minimum for workers, not just employees — agency workers, most zero-hours workers and casual staff are included. Your contract can give more; it cannot give less.
2. Multiply by your normal days per week.Three days a week gives 16.8 days. Four gives 22.4. Five gives 28. Partial days are real entitlement and should not be rounded down; many employers round up as policy, which they are allowed to do.
3. Check the contract for how bank holidays are treated.There is no automatic legal right to bank holidays off or to extra pay for working them. The contract either includes them within the 5.6 weeks or gives them in addition. "20 days plus bank holidays" is the common phrasing for the second.
4. For irregular hours, look at how your employer accrues it.For workers with genuinely irregular or part-year hours, holiday is now accrued as a percentage of hours worked in each pay period. Acas explains the current method; the arithmetic changed recently, so use a current source rather than an old one.
5. Work out your part-year entitlement if you did not work the full leave year.If you joined or left partway through, entitlement is pro-rated to the part of the leave year you were there. Find your leave year start date — it is in the contract or the staff handbook, and it is often not 1 January.
6. Know that you must be able to take it.Statutory holiday cannot normally be paid off instead of taken while you are still employed, and at least four of the 5.6 weeks generally cannot be carried into the next leave year unless you were prevented from taking it, for example by long-term sickness or family leave.
7. Give the notice your employer needs.In the absence of a contractual rule, statutory notice for taking leave is twice the length of the leave requested — two days' notice for one day off. Employers can also require you to take leave, or refuse a request, with the right notice. Most workplaces have a policy that overrides this default.
8. Check the figure on your payslip if you are unsure.Many payroll systems show accrued and remaining holiday. If it does not match your own arithmetic, ask HR for the calculation in writing before raising it as a problem.

Common mistakes

• Assuming 28 days is the entitlement — 28 days is 5.6 weeks for someone working five days a week. For anyone else it is the wrong number, usually to their disadvantage.
• Assuming bank holidays are always extra — There is no statutory right to them. An employer offering "28 days including bank holidays" is offering exactly the legal minimum, not being generous.
• Letting holiday build up to the end of the leave year — Most of it cannot be carried over and cannot be paid in lieu. Unused statutory leave is usually simply lost.

Questions people ask