Holiday
Holiday pay on a zero-hours contract
No guaranteed hours does not mean no holiday: how leave builds up month by month, what a day off is worth, and when the payslip can include it.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method and sources
Zero-hours and casual workers are entitled to paid holiday like everyone else; what differs is how it is counted. In Great Britain, since leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, a worker whose paid hours are wholly or mostly variable builds up leave at 12.07 % of the hours actually worked in each pay period, rounded to the nearest hour, up to 28 days a year. The leave can be taken from the next pay period. When you take it, a week’s holiday pay is the average of your pay in the last 52 weeks in which you were paid, looking back up to 104 weeks so that weeks with no work do not pull the average down; overtime and commission are included. Instead, your employer may pay rolled-up holiday pay, an extra 12.07 % on each payslip, shown on its own line. In Northern Ireland the 2024 rules do not apply, and casual workers accrue paid time off for every hour worked under the Northern Ireland regulations.
Holiday on a zero-hours contract
A week’s holiday pay
£245
| Weeks averaged (52 at most) | 40 |
| Holiday accrued on last period’s hours (GB) | 8 hours |
| Hourly holiday pay if you averaged 20 hours | £12.25 |
Six months on a zero-hours contract
Take a worker paid monthly at the National Living Wage, £12.71 an hour. Each month’s hours are multiplied by 12.07 % and rounded to the nearest hour, and what has accrued can be taken from the next month.
| Month | Hours worked | Pay for the month | Holiday hours accrued | Rolled-up pay alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 62.0 | £788.02 | 7 | £95.11 |
| May | 118.0 | £1,499.78 | 14 | £181.02 |
| June | 0.0 | £0.00 | 0 | £0.00 |
| July | 141.0 | £1,792.11 | 17 | £216.31 |
| August | 96.0 | £1,220.16 | 12 | £147.27 |
| September | 33.5 | £425.79 | 4 | £51.39 |
Over the six months the worker accrues 54 hours of holiday. Notice that rounding happens once per pay period: the 33.5 hours of September give 4 hours, not the 4.04 of the exact percentage.
What a day off is worth
Hours of leave are converted into money with the holiday pay rules of regulation 16. A week’s pay is the average of the weeks in which you were paid, up to 52, looking back no more than 104 weeks; regulation 16(1A) turns it into an hourly rate by dividing by the average hours worked in those weeks. For the worker in the table, paid in 5 of the six months, the average comes from those months only. A simple way to check: total pay in the paid weeks divided by the number of paid weeks, as the calculator above does, gives £245 a week for £9,800 over 40 paid weeks.
Rolled-up pay: when it is allowed
Regulation 16A allows employers of irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain to pay holiday as a 12.07 % uplift on all pay for work done, including overtime and commission. Three conditions apply: the uplift is paid at the same time as the wages, the payslip shows it as holiday pay on its own line, and during sick or statutory leave the employer pays the average holiday pay of the previous 52 weeks. When rolled-up pay is used, nothing more is paid when the leave is taken, so put some aside: the time off is still yours to take. If an employer was entitled to pay rolled-up holiday pay and did not, GOV.UK says the whole leave entitlement can be carried over (rolled-up holiday pay).
Keeping your own record
Zero-hours work makes holiday disputes likely, because hours change every month and payslips are rarely read line by line. Keep a running note of the hours on each payslip and the holiday hours shown as accrued; if your payslip does not show accrued holiday, ask for the figure. When you book leave, ask in writing how many hours it will cover and at what rate. Since 6 April 2026 employers in Great Britain must keep records of annual leave and holiday pay for 6 years, so the information exists and you can ask for it if a disagreement arises later.
Worker or employee?
Holiday rights belong to workers, not only to employees, so a zero-hours contract almost always carries them. Other rights do depend on being an employee, such as statutory notice and redundancy pay, and your status may also affect sick pay and family pay (employment status and your rights). A genuinely self-employed contractor has no statutory paid holiday.
Leaving, and Northern Ireland
When a zero-hours engagement ends, holiday accrued and not taken is paid in the final pay, unless rolled-up pay already covered it. Agencies are responsible for their temporary workers’ holiday in the same way. In Northern Ireland, nidirect states that casual and irregular workers are entitled to paid time off for every hour worked, under the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016; the 12.07 % accrual and rolled-up pay rules of Great Britain do not apply there.