Annual Leave Entitlements

Your entitlement to annual leave or holidays from work in is set out in legislation and in your contract of employment, legislation gives various entitlements to leave from work. These include annual leave, public holidays, maternity leave, adoptive leave, carer's leave, parental leave and other types of leave from work.

The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 provides for a basic annual paid leave entitlement of 4 weeks, although an employee's contract could give greater rights.

There are 3 different ways of calculating your annual leave entitlement:

-Based on the employee's working hours during what is called the leave year, which runs from April to March. An employee who has worked at least 1,365 hours in the leave year (that is, an average working week of 26.25 hours) is entitled to the maximum of 4 weeks' annual leave. Many employers use the calendar year (January-December) instead of the official leave year to calculate entitlement.
-By allowing 1/3 of a working week for each calendar month in which the employee has worked at least 117 hours
-8% of the hours worked in the leave year, subject to a maximum of 4 weeks

An employee may use whichever of these methods gives the greater entitlement.
An employee who has worked for at least 8 months is entitled to an unbroken period of 2 weeks' annual leave.