How do bank holidays work when you work part time?

The minimum statutory holiday entitlement for full timers is 28 days which may include bank holidays. Bank holidays do not have to be given as extra, but if they are given as extra to full timers any flexible workers are entitled to a pro-rata of what full timers get. The Government has an online calculator where you can calculate your entitlement based on the minimum holiday entitlement.

Part-Time working

For part-timers who work, say, two or three full days a week holiday entitlement is fairly straightforward. You are entitled to a pro-rata of whatever full timers at your organisation get, so, for example, if you work two full days a week and full timers work five days a week you would get two fifths of whatever full timers at your organisation get, including bank holidays – irrespective of which days you work.

People sometimes get confused due to the bank holidays because most fall on Mondays. If you are part time and work on Mondays, your work closes on bank holidays and you are forced to take the day off as paid leave you will have less choice over when you take your holidays. However, that doesn’t mean that you will have less holiday.

Term time or part-year hours [including casual working]

You can work out holiday entitlement by calculating hours worked annually, adding the 5.6 week amount and then paying people a twelfth of the full amount each month to avoid lower payments in the summer. Some employers have been using what is known as the 12.07% method where they pro rata holiday. 12.07% represents the proportion that 5.6 weeks of annual leave equates to throughout the year. Employers have then paid term time workers 12.07% of their pay for the term as holiday pay.

This has now been declared illegal and employers are no longer allowed to pro rata pay in this way for part-year workers. Instead, employers should use the “Calendar Week Method” based on the average weekly pay received during the 52-week period prior to the employee taking the annual leave, ignoring weeks where the employee did not work.

Shift workers

If shifts are the same weekly you can work your leave entitlement out based on a pro rata of full-time workers’ holidays. If shift patterns vary, you will need to work this out over a longer period, according to an established repeating pattern.

This is calculated as the lower of:

a) 5.6 weeks x average shifts per week; or
b) 28 days’ worth of shifts

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