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  |  Office Culture  |  Your rights  |  Holiday time: your right to a break
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Holiday time: your right to a break

by Work Rights Expert, Rachel Lewis
Your holiday rightsDid you know your employer doesn’t have to give you bank holidays off? Get the facts on your rights to time off

Looking forward to your holiday this year? So you should be – recent research shows that the average working week in the UK is getting longer and longer, and that over half the working population now feel they have much less leisure time than they did five years ago. With trends like these, it’s all the more important to make sure that you take advantage of any entitlement to holidays and time off.

Who is entitled to paid annual leave?

There are now two holiday entitlement options that an employer can adopt. Either the entitlement to paid annual leave begins on the first day of employment as an agreed and fixed amount.

Alternatively, the employer can use an accrual system whereby during the first year of employment the proportion of the leave builds up incrementally over the year. The amount of leave that may be taken builds up monthly in advance, at the rate of one-twelfth of the annual entitlement each month.

Where this calculation does not result in an exact number of days, the amount of leave that may be taken is rounded up to the next half day. Any rounded-up element is deducted from the leave remaining.

For example:

  • A full-time worker who is in his or her third month of employment would have built up 5 days' leave. (The annual entitlement of 20 days multiplied by 3/12 equals 5 days).
  • A part-timer who works three days a week and is still in his or her first month of employment would be able to take one day's leave. The annual entitlement of 12 days (four weeks times three days a week) multiplied by 1/12 equals one day.
  • A full-time worker who is in his or her eighth month of employment would have built up 13 1/2 days' leave. The annual entitlement of 20 days multiplied by 8/12 equals 13.33 days, which is rounded up to 13 1/2 days.



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