How to easily calculate holiday entitlement for part-time workers | Moorepay

Part-time holiday entitlement calculator

Easily pro rata holiday entitlement for your part-time employees in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Where is your employee based?

There are eight bank holidays for employees based in England and Wales from January to December 2023, if they're eligible. Read more here.

How many bank holiday days do you give your staff as annual leave per year?

So if your business operates as normal on public holidays, and your employees work regardless of whether it’s a bank holiday or not, this answer would be zero.

How many additional holidays do your full-time employees get annually?

How many days does your part-time employee work per week?

... days

Is the annual holiday entitlement for your part-time employee

Days rounded up as per legislation

How to easily calculate holiday entitlement for part-time workers

You probably know that full-time employees are entitled to 28 days’ paid annual leave. But what about part-time employees?

Holiday entitlement calculations are a bit trickier for part-time employees, but we’ve got you covered. We’ll walk you through the calculations behind our calculator above – from working out annual leave based on the number of days or number of hours worked a week, plus detailing what you need to be aware of when making these calculations.

Calculating statutory annual leave entitlement for part-time workers

By law, employees have the right to 5.6 weeks’ statutory paid holiday (or ‘statutory annual leave’) whether they work full time, part time, or under a zero-hours contract. For full-timers, that’s 28 days a year. This minimum amount includes any bank holidays given as annual leave – but more on that later.

A part-time employee’s holiday entitlement is pro-rated to a full-time employee’s entitlement, based on the amount of time they work in proportion to a full-time role. So for part-time employees, they are still required to be given the same number of weeks as a full-time worker. But what that week looks like in terms of days or hours looks different, depending of course on how many days or hours are worked a week by the part-time worker.

To calculate part-time statutory holiday entitlement in days, use the following formula: 5.6 weeks x number of days worked per week = holiday entitlement in days

To calculate part-time statutory holiday entitlement in hours, use the following formula: 5.6 weeks x number of hours worked per week = holiday entitlement in hours

Examples of statutory annual leave entitlement for part-time workers, based on number of days worked a week

Part-timer’s working weekCalculationStatutory annual entitlement
One day a week 5.6 x 1 = 5.65.6 days
One-and-a-half days5.6 x 1.5 = 8.48.4 days
Two days5.6 x 2 = 11.211.2 days
Two-and-a-half days (half a week)5.6 x 2.5 = 1414 days
Three days5.6 x 3 = 16.816.8 days
Four days5.6 x 4 = 22.422.4 days

Please note, the above days include equivalents. For example, if someone works two half-days, that would total one day, and therefore their annual leave entitlement would be 5.6 days over the year.

Calculating enhanced holiday entitlement for part-time workers, in days

Some employers offer above the statutory minimum annual leave amount. This is often called ‘contractual’ or ‘enhanced’ holiday entitlement, and will be outlined in their employment contracts. If you wish to give more holidays than the statutory entitlement, you must ensure that your part time employees also receive the additional entitlement on a pro rata basis.

To do this, you must first work out the number of weeks given as holiday per year, since it will be above 5.6. You first calculate the total days annual leave given to full-time staff, divided by 5 days a week. So if full-time workers are given 33 days’ holiday per year, this would be:

33 / 5 = 6.6 weeks.

You then apply this weekly rate to your part timer (as per the table above) by multiplying by the number of days worked. So say if the employee worked 4 days a week, the calculation would be:

6.6 weeks entitlement x 4 days a week = 26.4 days annual leave entitlement

An even simpler version of this calculation is:

(4 days part-timer works a week ÷ 5 days full-timers work per week) x 33 days total annual leave = 26.4 days

Calculating statutory annual leave as a number of hours per year

In some situations, such as when someone works different hours each day, it may be more relevant to express holiday entitlement as a number of hours per annum. This follows a similar process as the step above, but may need an extra step in the calculation to convert days into hours.

Gov.uk confirms this calculation is: Hours worked per week by part-timer x weeks of holiday allowance = holiday allocation (in hours).

Example

For example, for a part-time worker working 20 hours a week, and receiving statutory minimum holiday entitlement of 5.6 weeks, the calculation is simply: 20 hours x 5.6 weeks = 112 hours annual holiday entitlement.

Examples of statutory annual leave entitlement for part-time workers, based on number of hours worked a week

Part-timer’s working weekCalculationStatutory annual entitlement
7 hours (one day in a 35-hour working week)5.6 x 739.2 hours
14 hours5.6 x 1478.4 hours
21 hours5.6 x 21117.6 hours
28 hours5.6 x 28 156.8 hours
35 hours5.6 x 35 196 hours

Please note it’s the same calculation no matter number of days worked.

How to check the statutory minimum holiday allowance in hours

To check what the statutory minimum hours you need to give your employees for holiday allowance, simply do: 28 (days leave) x hours in a working day.

Alternatively, you can do: 5.6 weeks x hours in a working week.

These should lead you to the same answer. For example, with a 7 hour working day or 35 hour working week, the answer is 196 hours.

Calculating enhanced holiday entitlement for part-time workers, in hours

If your full time employees are entitled to more than the statutory minimum, you’ll of course need to adjust your calculation.

First of all, you need to know how many weeks your full-time employees take off. If you haven’t got that yet, calculate this by dividing the number of days they have off by 5 days a week:

Total days annual leave / five days a week = weeks of annual leave

Alternatively, if you’re starting with an hourly holiday allocation, you can calculate this by doing:

Total hours annual leave / hours worked a week = weeks of annual leave

Then you apply this to the same calculation as above, to work out the number of hours your part-time employees get:

Weeks of annual leave given x hours worked per week by part-timer = part-timer’s annual holiday allowance in hours.

Example

So for example if your full-timers get 25 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays (which gives 33 days in total per annum), you can work out their weekly amount by doing:

33 days / 5 days a week = 6.6

The entitlement of a part time worker who works 20 hours per week would be calculated as:

20 hours per week x 6.6 weeks = 132 hours holiday per year. Again, this calculation includes the bank holiday entitlement.

So if a part-timer who works 5 hours on a Tuesday and 7 on a Wednesday wishes to take these days as holiday, their annual entitlement would be reduced by 12 hours.

Some crucial reminders about calculating annual leave

By law, you cannot round down the leave. There is no obligation to round up the leave, but you can do so if preferred. So, if an employee has 26.4 days holidays, the holidays may be rounded up to 26.5 days, but they may not be reduced to 26 days.

Statutory provision is capped at 28 days and even though some employees may work 6 or 7 days per week, their entitlement will remain at 28 days.

Bank and public holidays

There are normally eight specified bank holidays in England and Wales each year, nine in Scotland and ten in Northern Ireland (but the statutory provision is eight).

Problems can arise where employees are entitled to bank holidays off work on top of their annual leave entitlement.

This is because most bank holidays fall on a Monday, so a part-timer who works on a Monday will have a higher proportion of their holidays “fixed” than a colleague working on a Tuesday or Wednesday for example.

(At least four days of a Monday worker’s holidays will be fixed bank holidays. The Tuesday worker will only incur fixed bank holidays when Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day Fall on a Tuesday.)

If an employee is normally scheduled to work on a bank holiday and receives this day off as a fixed holiday, their holiday entitlement should automatically be reduced by one day.

If an employee is not normally contracted or scheduled to work on a day when a bank holiday falls, this does not affect their holiday entitlement as it is not a working day.

The easiest and fairest way of calculating entitlements is to deal with all the holidays as an inclusive amount. So, if a full time employee is entitled to 25 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays, this gives a total of 33 days per annum. This can be expressed as 6.6 weeks’ holiday (33 ÷ 5 = 6.6).

If an employee receives statutory minimum leave entitlement, and get all eight bank holidays off as leave, they would be entitled to an additional 20 days off which is 28 in total (5.6 weeks in total).

Calculating leave in this way will ensure employers always meet the statutory minimum.

You can then easily calculate a part timers total entitlement, for example, an employee working three days per week would be entitled to 6.6 x 3 (days) = 19.8 days holiday per year.

Further advice and support

If you require advice or support, why not download our monthly Employment Law Guide. You can also book a consultation.

Scroll back up to use the pro rata holiday calculator.

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Elaine Prichard
About the author

Elaine Pritchard

Elaine has a wealth of knowledge in producing contracts, training materials and other documentation as well as training other consultants. She piloted a scheme whereby she went on-site to act as a client’s HR Manager two days per week, whilst the post-holder was on maternity leave. Elaine also previously ran her own retail business for seven years, employing four people. Elaine is a field based consultant for Moorepay and provides on-site HR and Employment Law advice, consultancy and training services to our clients.

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