Bank holiday overlap checker

There is no legal right to a bank holiday off

Almost all workers get at least 5.6 weeks of statutory paid annual leave — 28 days for a standard five-day week. In Great Britain that comes from the Working Time Regulations 1998; Northern Ireland has its own Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, with the same figures. Nowhere in either set of regulations is the phrase "bank holiday". There is no separate statutory entitlement to Christmas Day, Easter Monday or any of the others off work, paid or otherwise.

Everything about bank holidays — whether they're paid, whether they count towards your 28 days, whether working one earns you a day in lieu — is down to what your employer has agreed with you, not what Parliament requires.

What your contract is actually telling you

Because the law is silent, every UK employment contract has to spell out its own position. In practice, almost every contract falls into one of two shapes. This calculator labels them Model A and Model B — not legal terms, just shorthand for the two patterns you'll actually meet.

Model B — bank holidays included in your allowance

Your 28 days already has the eight bank holidays built into it. They sit in your calendar as pre-allocated fixed dates, and the remaining days are yours to book. You never "choose" the bank holiday days — they're spent for you, on dates you didn't pick.

Model A — bank holidays on top of your allowance

Your 28 days is entirely yours to book, and the eight bank holidays are added separately as extra paid days off. Nothing about a bank holiday touches your 28-day pot at all.

Why the difference bites when a bank holiday lands on your leave

People often assume a bank holiday falling inside a week they've booked off either makes no difference, or always earns a day back. Neither is quite right — it depends on which model you're on, and the effect shows up over the year, not in that one week.

Under Model B, the bank holiday inside your booked week was never going to come out of your discretionary days anyway — it's one of the eight fixed dates already accounted for elsewhere in your 28. So that particular week only draws down the ordinary working days from your pot. The bite isn't in the week; it's that your pot for the rest of the year only ever had 20 discretionary days in it to begin with. Under Model A, the same week costs you the same ordinary working days, but the bank holiday itself was never part of your 28-day pot, so nothing about the overlap reduces what you have left for later. Check your contract or staff handbook for how your employer actually applies this — the mechanics above describe the normal shape of each model, not a statutory rule.

A worked example: the same job under each arrangement

Take one full-time worker in England, salary £31,200 a year, five-day week, 260 working days a year. £31,200 ÷ 260 = £120.00 a day, exactly — a clean number chosen so every sum below reproduces exactly if you check it yourself. Both contracts give the statutory minimum of 28 days and both sit in a nation with 8 bank holidays. Only the wording differs.

£4,320.00 − £3,360.00 = £960.00, which is exactly 8 × £120.00 — the value of the eight bank holidays. Model A pays for them as a separate block; Model B pays for them out of the same 28-day pot the worker would otherwise have booked freely. Same salary, same statutory minimum, same nation's bank holidays — £960.00 a year of paid time off apart, purely from contract wording.

Now the single-week case from the section above: our worker books a five-day week that happens to include one bank holiday, leaving 4 ordinary working days to draw from their pot. Under Model B: 20 − 4 = 16 discretionary days left for the rest of the year. Under Model A: 28 − 4 = 24 discretionary days left. The gap between 24 and 16 is 8 — again, precisely the eight bank holidays — confirming the effect is annual, not weekly: that one overlapping week draws down the same 4 days under either model.

Part-time workers and the pro-rata trap

Several of the UK's bank holidays are fixed to fall on a Monday every year — Easter Monday and the early May, spring and summer bank holidays among them — while New Year's Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day move with the calendar (the 2027 bank holiday dates show where each one lands in 2027). That clustering creates a real trap for part-timers under Model B. If an employer simply deducts whichever bank holidays land on a person's contracted working days, someone who works Monday to Wednesday loses most of the year's bank holidays from their pot, while a colleague on the same hours who works Thursday to Saturday loses almost none — even though both have identical contracts, identical pay and identical pro-rata leave.

That gap feels unfair, but the law does not clearly forbid it. The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 protect you only from worse treatment "on the ground that the worker is a part-time worker" (regulation 5(2)(a)). legislation.gov.uk — Part-time Workers Regulations 2000, reg 5. Losing more bank holidays because you work Mondays is a result of which days you work, not of being part-time. ACAS's own example accepts it: of two people on 3 days a week, the one who works Mondays "has to use more of their holiday entitlement for bank holidays". ACAS — bank holidays and Christmas. In Northern Ireland, the official guidance goes further: if your employer gives extra time off on bank holidays, it "should be given pro rata to you as well, even if the bank holiday does not fall on your usual work day". nidirect — holiday entitlements.

Many employers avoid the gap anyway. Instead of deducting whichever bank holidays happen to land on a person's rota, they pro-rate the bank-holiday allowance itself into a fixed number of days or hours, credited the same way regardless of which weekdays someone works. A worker on 3 days a week, for example, would be credited 8 × 3⁄5 = 4.8 bank-holiday-equivalent days a year — the same figure whether their three days include a Monday or not — rather than having actual calendar bank holidays subtracted from their allowance one at a time. If your allowance changes depending on which days you're rostered onto, ask HR whether they pro-rate bank holidays, and check your contract.

Working out which one you're on

Start with your written statement of employment or contract's annual leave clause. "28 days inclusive of bank/public holidays" is Model B; "28 days plus 8 bank holidays" or "28 days plus public holidays" is Model A. If the wording is ambiguous, your leave balance at the start of the leave year is the tell: an opening balance of roughly 28 days points to Model B, and roughly 36 points to Model A. The staff handbook or HR system usually settles it in writing — worth getting that in writing if your contract doesn't say, since this is a contractual question, not one the Working Time Regulations answer for you.

Whichever model applies, the legal minimum is 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, bank holidays included. On a five-day week that is 28 days. If you work part-time it is fewer: on 3 days a week, 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days. GOV.UK — holiday entitlement. The 28 days is a ceiling, not a floor. Regulation 13A(3) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 says the 5.6 weeks is "subject to a maximum of 28 days", so on a six-day week the statutory minimum is still 28 days, not 6 × 5.6 = 33.6. legislation.gov.uk — WTR 1998, reg 13A. Northern Ireland has the same cap in regulation 16(2) of the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016. legislation.gov.uk — WTR (NI) 2016, reg 16. Your contract can give you more than this.

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