Bank holiday overlap checker
This tool tells you which bank holidays fall inside the leave you're planning to book. Whether that overlap actually costs you anything depends on a sentence in your contract that most people have never read — because, unlike your 28-day minimum, bank holidays aren't guaranteed by law at all. Here's how to read that sentence.
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There is no legal right to a bank holiday off
The Working Time Regulations 1998 give every UK worker 5.6 weeks — 28 days for a standard five-day week — of statutory paid annual leave. Nowhere in that legislation 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.
| Over the full year | Model B (included) | Model A (on top) |
|---|---|---|
| Total paid days off | 28 | 28 + 8 = 36 |
| Fixed bank-holiday days (not your choice) | 8 | 8 |
| Days freely yours to book | 28 − 8 = 20 | 28 |
| Value of all paid leave, at £120.00/day | 28 × £120.00 = £3,360.00 | 36 × £120.00 = £4,320.00 |
| Value of the freely-bookable days | 20 × £120.00 = £2,400.00 | 28 × £120.00 = £3,360.00 |
£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. 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 is not just unfair, it can be unlawful. The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 prohibit treating a part-time worker worse than a comparable full-timer on the terms of their contract — including pay and leave — without objective justification; benefits are due pro rata to hours worked. ACAS — part-time workers' rights. Two part-timers on the same hours ending up with materially different amounts of bookable leave, purely because of which weekdays they're rostered on, sits uneasily with that principle.
The usual fix is to stop deducting whichever bank holidays happen to land on a person's rota, and instead 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 pro-rata allowance changes depending on which days you're rostered onto, that's worth raising with HR against the wording above.
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 combined total your employer gives you can't lawfully fall below the 28-day statutory cap, which sits in regulation 13A of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (not regulation 13, which only covers the first 4 of the 5.6 weeks). legislation.gov.uk — WTR 1998, reg 13A
Frequently asked questions
How many bank holidays do I get in the UK?
England and Wales have 8 bank holidays per year, Scotland has 9, and Northern Ireland typically has 10. You can check exact dates on GOV.UK.
Is there a legal right to have bank holidays off work?
No. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give 5.6 weeks (28 days) of statutory paid leave a year but say nothing about bank holidays specifically. An employer can lawfully require you to work Christmas Day at ordinary pay, or count all 8 bank holidays towards your 28-day minimum. Whether you get bank holidays off, paid, or on top of your leave is entirely down to your contract. gov.uk.
What happens if a bank holiday falls during my annual leave?
It depends on your contract, not the law. Under a Model B contract (bank holidays included in your allowance), that bank holiday was already one of the 8 fixed dates inside your 28 days, so booking over it doesn't draw extra days from your discretionary pot that week. Under Model A (bank holidays on top), the bank holiday sits outside your 28-day pot entirely, so it never touches your allowance either way. Check your contract or staff handbook for how your employer applies this.
Do part-time workers get bank holidays pro rata?
Employers should pro-rate bank holiday allowance in proportion to hours worked, since the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 bar treating part-timers worse than a comparable full-timer on pay and leave. Because several bank holidays fall on a Monday every year, simply deducting whichever calendar bank holidays land on someone's contracted days can disadvantage a Monday-working part-timer far more than a colleague on identical hours who isn't rostered on Mondays — the usual fix is a fixed pro-rata allowance instead. ACAS.
How do Model A and Model B contracts differ in what I actually get?
Under Model B, your 28 days includes the 8 bank holidays, leaving 20 days you choose yourself. Under Model A, your 28 days is entirely yours to book and the 8 bank holidays come on top, for 36 paid days off in total. On a £120-a-day salary that's a £960 difference in the value of paid leave over the year (8 × £120), even though both contracts meet the same 28-day statutory minimum.