Yes, a bank holiday can count as annual leave in the UK — and for a large share of workers it does. Your employer is legally allowed to include bank holidays inside your 5.6 weeks of statutory paid holiday, so whether they come out of your allowance or sit on top of it is decided by your contract, not by law.
That single sentence causes more confusion than almost any other point in UK holiday law. This post shows you exactly where to look, how the arithmetic works, and what to do when your contract does not say.
Key Takeaways
- Almost all workers get 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday, capped at 28 days — GOV.UK.
- “An employer can choose to include bank holidays as part of a worker’s statutory annual leave” — so 20 days + 8 bank holidays is a lawful way to deliver the full 28.
- There is no separate statutory right to bank holidays off or to extra pay for working them.
- If your contract is silent, custom and practice over previous years is usually what decides the argument.
How Bank Holidays and Annual Leave Entitlement Fit Together
Start with the number that is fixed by law. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, almost everyone classed as a worker gets 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. For someone working five days a week that is 28 days, and GOV.UK confirms statutory paid holiday is capped at 28 days no matter how many days a week you work.
Now the part people miss. Those 28 days are a total, not a floor that bank holidays sit above. England and Wales have 8 bank holidays. An employer who gives you 20 days of chosen leave plus those 8 bank holidays has given you exactly your statutory 28 and has broken no rule.
An employer who gives you 28 days of chosen leave plus bank holidays is being more generous than the law requires. Both arrangements are common. Neither is a mistake.
The Three Contract Wordings
Every UK employment contract does one of three things with bank holidays. Find your clause and match it:
| Contract wording | What you actually get (England & Wales) | Statutory minimum met? |
|---|---|---|
| “28 days inclusive of bank holidays” | 20 days you choose + 8 fixed | Yes, exactly |
| “20 days plus bank holidays” | 20 days you choose + 8 fixed | Yes, exactly |
| “25 days plus bank holidays” | 25 days you choose + 8 fixed = 33 | Yes, with 5 days above the minimum |
Rows one and two look different and deliver the identical outcome. That is worth checking before you raise it with HR, because “inclusive of bank holidays” is not evidence that you are being short-changed.
Do You Have a Right to Take the Bank Holiday Off?
No. There is no statutory right to time off on a bank or public holiday, and no statutory right to be paid extra for working one. GOV.UK is blunt about it: your employer does not have to give you paid leave on bank holidays.
What the law does protect is the total. If you work a bank holiday, you must still receive your full 5.6 weeks of paid holiday as time off at some other point in the leave year. An employer cannot roster you through the bank holidays and then treat your entitlement as spent.
Premium pay — time and a half, double time, a day off in lieu — is a contractual benefit, not a legal entitlement. If your contract or your employer’s long-standing practice provides it, it is enforceable. If neither does, a bank holiday shift pays your normal rate.
The Scotland and Northern Ireland Wrinkle
The 28-day cap is UK-wide, but the bank holiday calendar is not. Scotland has 9 bank holidays and Northern Ireland has 10, against 8 in England and Wales.
This matters if your contract says “20 days plus bank holidays” and you work in Belfast. You would receive 30 days in total, because the extra St Patrick’s Day and Battle of the Boyne holidays are on top. It also matters for multi-site employers: a single “plus bank holidays” clause quietly delivers different totals to different offices.
Our employer guide to UK bank holidays sets out the full 2026 calendar for all four nations and the pro-rating rules for part-time staff.
Worked Example: What “Inclusive” Costs You in Practice
Take Dan, who works Monday to Friday in Manchester and has a contract giving 28 days inclusive of bank holidays.
- Statutory entitlement: 28 days
- Bank holidays in England and Wales: 8, all deducted automatically
- Days Dan chooses himself: 28 − 8 = 20
Now take Rosa, same office, on 25 days plus bank holidays.
- Days Rosa chooses herself: 25
- Bank holidays: 8
- Total: 33 days
Dan and Rosa are both fully compliant arrangements. The gap between them is 5 days of discretionary leave — and that gap is entirely a negotiation point, not a legal one. If you are comparing offers, compare the total and the discretionary figures separately. A “28 days holiday” advert and a “28 days plus bank holidays” advert are 8 days apart.
What If Your Contract Says Nothing About Bank Holidays?
Silence is the hardest case, and it is more common than you would expect in small organisations.
Work through these in order:
- Check the staff handbook and any written policy. These often carry contractual force even when the contract itself is thin.
- Check your payslips and leave records from previous years. If bank holidays were never deducted from your balance across several years, that consistent treatment can become an implied term through custom and practice.
- Check what colleagues on the same contract receive. Inconsistent treatment of identical contracts is a warning sign.
- Ask HR to confirm in writing. A written confirmation resolves the ambiguity going forward, whichever way it lands.
- Escalate to a grievance only if the answer contradicts years of previous practice.
Whichever answer you get, the 5.6-week floor still applies. An employer cannot use contractual silence to deliver fewer than 28 days in total.
Part-Time Workers: Where This Goes Wrong Most Often
Bank holidays cluster on Mondays. That single fact creates the most common unfairness in UK leave administration.
If you work Monday to Wednesday and bank holidays are deducted only when they fall on your working days, you lose a far bigger share of your pro-rated allowance than a colleague working Wednesday to Friday. The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 make that unlawful less favourable treatment.
The fix is to pro-rate the combined total — annual leave plus bank holidays — and then deduct the bank holidays that actually fall on your days. Everyone on the same fraction of hours ends with the same total, regardless of which days they work. Our guide to calculating holiday entitlement for part-time UK staff walks through the arithmetic.
What This Means for You
Do these three things this week:
- Read the holiday clause in your contract and identify which of the three wordings above applies.
- Count your total. Discretionary days plus applicable bank holidays must reach at least 28 for a five-day week, pro-rated below that.
- Check your leave tracker matches the contract. Where bank holidays are meant to be additional but the system still deducts them, you are silently losing days — an error that carries over year after year unless someone spots it.
If you run the leave system rather than sit in it, the cleanest structure is to hold bank holidays as their own allocation, separate from discretionary leave, with the right national calendar attached to each employee’s location. Leave Balance ships with pre-loaded England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland calendars and tracks the two pots separately, so “inclusive” and “plus” contracts can sit side by side without manual adjustment. Flat $10/month, unlimited employees, 14-day free trial.
This article is general information about UK holiday law, not legal advice. Check your own contract and take advice on your specific circumstances.
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