Do bank holidays count towards annual leave? UK rules explained

Do bank holidays count towards my annual leave?

They can, and in many contracts they do. UK law - via the Working Time Regulations 1998 - gives workers 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave, which caps at 28 days for someone working five days a week (see gov.uk on holiday entitlement, or our full guide to UK annual leave). Crucially, the law says nothing about which days those must be. There is no statutory right to bank holidays off, and an employer can lawfully count bank holidays as part of the 5.6 weeks.

So the honest answer to "am I entitled to the August bank holiday off?" is: read your contract. That single line of wording decides everything.

What does my contract wording actually mean?

Almost every UK contract uses one of two formulas, and they produce the same total but very different day-to-day experiences:

Both meet the statutory minimum. The difference shows up at the edges: what happens if you're asked to work a bank holiday, and how part-time entitlement is calculated. Employers writing new contracts should pick one wording deliberately and make the leave system mirror it exactly.

Do part-time workers get bank holidays? The Monday problem

Part-timers must receive a pro-rata equivalent of the full-time package - they cannot be treated less favourably just for being part-time. That sounds simple until you notice that most of the 8 usual English bank holidays fall on a Monday.

Take two part-timers, both on 3 days a week, both entitled to 5.6 × 3 = 16.8 days of statutory leave:

• Asha works Monday-Wednesday. She's off work on nearly every bank holiday anyway, so she benefits from most of the 8 without spending her allowance.
• Ben works Tuesday-Thursday. Bank-holiday Mondays are days he never works - so if bank holidays are simply "given" as days off, he gets almost nothing from them.

The arithmetic gets fiddly fast, especially with mid-year starters - our pro-rata holiday calculator does the sums for you.

Do I get extra pay for working a bank holiday?

Not by law. There is no statutory right to extra pay - no automatic time-and-a-half, no automatic day in lieu - for working a bank holiday. If your employer pays a premium or gives lieu days, that comes from the contract or policy, not from statute. Retail and hospitality contracts often do offer something, precisely because they need people to volunteer for those shifts; office contracts often stay silent because the question rarely arises.

For employers: whatever you decide, write it down. "We've always paid double time" that exists only in folklore becomes a dispute the first time a new manager doesn't know the folklore. Acas has practical guidance on getting holiday terms clear.

What if a bank holiday falls during my holiday or sickness?

Two collisions come up every year:

• Bank holiday inside a booked holiday. If your contract says "28 including", the bank holiday is simply one of the leave days you're using that week. If it says "20 plus", a fair system shouldn't charge a bookable day for the bank holiday - you were getting it off anyway. Check how your booking system counts that week; this is one of the most common silent errors in DIY spreadsheets.
• Bank holiday during sickness. If you're signed off sick across a bank holiday, how that day is treated - sick day, bank holiday, or leave - should follow your contract and sickness policy. The legal detail here depends on the wording, so the practical rule for employers is: have a written rule and apply it identically to everyone, rather than deciding case by case.

If your requests around bank-holiday weeks keep getting turned down, see our guide on when an employer can refuse a holiday request - popular weeks are exactly where clear, first-come-first-served rules earn their keep. And if you're juggling appointments rather than holidays, time off for medical appointments covers that ground.

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