Holiday for part-time and irregular-hours staff
Holiday is simple when everyone works Monday to Friday. It stops being simple the moment shifts vary week to week — which, for most rota-based businesses, is nearly everyone.
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Key takeaways
- Part-time staff get the same 5.6 weeks as everyone else, applied to their own pattern — three days a week is 16.8 days a year
- For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually work
- 12.07% is not arbitrary: 5.6 weeks of leave divided by the 46.4 working weeks in a year
- Rolled-up holiday pay is permitted again — but only for irregular-hours and part-year workers, and only for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024
Settled part-time hours
If someone works the same days every week, the calculation is the ordinary one: days per week × 5.6. Three days gives 16.8 days a year, four gives 22.4. They are entitled to exactly the same 5.6 weeks as a full-time colleague — it simply amounts to fewer days, because their week is shorter.
Since almost nobody books 0.8 of a day, most employers either round up as policy or track holiday in hours. Hours tend to be cleaner where a "day" might be four hours one week and ten the next.
Irregular hours and part-year staff: the 12.07% rule
For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, holiday for irregular-hours and part-year workers accrues at 12.07% of the hours actually worked in each pay period, up to the 5.6-week maximum.
Why 12.07%?
A year has 52 weeks. Take out the 5.6 weeks of statutory leave and 46.4 working weeks remain. The leave is therefore worth 5.6 ÷ 46.4 of the time actually worked:
5.6 ÷ 46.4 = 12.07%
Put another way, roughly seven minutes of holiday for every hour on shift.
| Hours worked in the pay period | Accrual at 12.07% | Holiday built up |
|---|---|---|
| 20 hours | 20 × 0.1207 | 2.41 hours |
| 40 hours | 40 × 0.1207 | 4.83 hours |
| 80 hours | 80 × 0.1207 | 9.66 hours |
| 160 hours | 160 × 0.1207 | 19.31 hours |
Rolled-up holiday pay
Rolled-up holiday pay — paying the holiday element as an uplift alongside normal pay rather than when leave is taken — is permitted again, but the conditions are narrow. It applies only to irregular-hours and part-year workers, and only for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024.
Two things are easy to get wrong. The uplift has to be itemised separately on the payslip rather than absorbed into the hourly rate. And paying it does not remove the right to take the time off — the purpose of the Working Time Regulations is rest, not compensation.
Itemising it separately matters for a second reason: the holiday element does not count towards National Minimum Wage pay for the hours worked. Folding a 12.07% uplift into the headline hourly rate can leave the rate for the work itself below the statutory floor.
If you are not using rolled-up pay, holiday is paid when it is taken, at the worker's normal rate — which for variable pay means a 52-week average. That calculation has its own guide: how to calculate UK holiday pay.
Tracking accrual that changes every week
The 12.07% rule is arithmetically simple and administratively awkward: the balance moves every pay period, for every worker, based on hours that are different each time. On a spreadsheet that is a recurring manual job and a recurring source of error.
Because clocked hours already sit in the system, RosterElf's holiday management can accrue against them rather than asking anyone to recalculate. Staff see their balance in the app, and the figure reflects the shifts they actually worked. Booking and refusing that leave has its own notice rules, covered in handling holiday requests, and the accrued balance is paid out per final pay when someone leaves.
Accrue holiday from hours actually worked
Balances that update from clocked time, so irregular-hours staff always see the right figure.
This guide summarises the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the 2024 reforms as they generally apply, and is not legal advice. Whether a worker counts as irregular-hours or part-year, and which leave year applies, depend on the specific contract. Check GOV.UK or take advice before relying on it for a particular case. It does not constitute legal, HR, or professional advice and should not be relied on as a substitute for advice specific to your business, workforce, or circumstances.
Part-time and irregular hours holiday questions
- Multiply the days they work each week by 5.6. Someone on three days a week is entitled to 16.8 days (3 × 5.6); four days gives 22.4. Where shift lengths vary it is usually cleaner to track the entitlement in hours rather than days.
- There are 52 weeks in a year and 5.6 of them are statutory leave, leaving 46.4 working weeks. 5.6 ÷ 46.4 = 12.07%. So a worker builds up just over seven minutes of holiday for every hour worked.
- Broadly, someone whose paid hours in each pay period are wholly or mostly variable, or who is contracted to work only part of the year with unpaid periods in between. Zero-hours staff and term-time-only staff are the common examples.
- No. It applies to irregular-hours and part-year workers for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. Staff on settled part-time hours keep the ordinary 5.6-weeks pro-rata calculation — see our holiday entitlement guide.