Do Zero-Hours Workers Get Holiday Pay in the UK?

Yes — zero-hours workers in the UK are entitled to paid holiday, and always have been. Since the 2024 reforms, leave for irregular-hours and part-year workers accrues at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period, and employers may lawfully pay it as rolled-up holiday pay added to every payslip.

Holiday pay is one of the most under-claimed entitlements in the UK labour market, largely because the calculation looks opaque from the outside. It is not. This article covers the accrual rule, the two lawful payment methods, and the numbers worked through.

Key Takeaways

• Irregular hours and part-year workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of hours worked, for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024 — GOV.UK.
• 12.07% is not arbitrary: it is 5.6 weeks ÷ 46.4 working weeks.
• Rolled-up holiday pay is lawful again for irregular-hours and part-year workers, but only if shown as a separate item on the payslip.
• The Employment Rights Act 2025 guaranteed-hours reforms are not yet in force — currently expected in 2027.

Who Counts as an Irregular Hours or Part-Year Worker?

The 12.07% rule does not apply to everyone. GOV.UK defines two specific categories:

• Irregular hours worker — someone whose contract means the number of paid hours in each pay period is “wholly or mostly variable.” A zero-hours hospitality worker is the government’s own example.
• Part-year worker — someone required to work only part of the year, with periods of at least a week in which they are not required to work and are not paid.

If you are on a zero-hours contract with genuinely variable hours, you almost certainly fall into the first category. If you work a steady 20 hours every week under a fixed pattern, the position is less clear and you may fall under the standard 5.6-week rules instead.

Where the 12.07% Figure Comes From

The number is derived, not invented. Statutory holiday is 5.6 weeks. A year has 52 weeks, of which 5.6 are holiday, leaving 46.4 weeks actually worked.

5.6 ÷ 46.4 = 0.1207 = 12.07%

Every hour worked earns 0.1207 hours of paid holiday. A worker who does 1,000 hours in a year has earned 120.7 hours of paid leave — proportionally identical to the 5.6 weeks a full-timer receives.

Accrual is calculated at the end of each pay period, on the hours actually worked in that period. Hours are rounded to the nearest hour, with 30 minutes or more rounding up.

Worked Example: A Zero-Hours Bar Worker

Sam works on a zero-hours contract at a pub, paid monthly at £13.50 an hour. His leave year began on 1 May 2026.

Month	Hours worked	Holiday accrued (× 0.1207)
May	68	8.2 → 8 hours
June	94	11.3 → 11 hours
July	112	13.5 → 14 hours
August	86	10.4 → 10 hours

After four months, Sam has accrued 43 hours of paid holiday. By year end, his total accrual will depend on total hours worked — if he works 1,000 hours across the year, he accrues approximately 121 hours (about 15 standard 8-hour shifts).

How Holiday Pay Works

Under the 2024 reforms, employers have two lawful options for paying zero-hours workers:

Option 1: Accrual and request

The worker accrues leave and requests it in the usual way. Holiday pay is calculated using the 52-week rule: average weekly pay over the previous 52 weeks (excluding any weeks with no pay, up to a maximum of 104 weeks back).

Option 2: Rolled-up holiday pay

The employer adds 12.07% to every hour worked, showing it as a separate line on the payslip. When the worker takes leave, they receive their normal hourly rate (which already includes the rolled-up amount). This is now lawful for irregular-hours and part-year workers, after being banned for most workers since 2009.

Method	How it works	Best for
Accrual and request	Leave accrues; paid at average weekly rate when taken	Workers with regular patterns
Rolled-up holiday pay	12.07% added to every payslip	Genuinely irregular workers

What the 52-Week Rule Means

When paying holiday under the accrual method, the employer must use the worker’s average weekly pay over the previous 52 weeks. The rule works like this:

1. Look back up to 52 weeks.
2. Count only weeks in which the worker received pay.
3. If fewer than 52 paid weeks exist, look back up to 104 weeks.
4. Divide total pay across those weeks by the number of weeks to get the average.

This means a zero-hours worker who works heavily in summer and lightly in winter will have a higher average weekly pay calculated during autumn (when the summer weeks dominate the 52-week window) and a lower one in spring. The rolling window smooths the calculation but does not eliminate volatility.

Common Mistakes Employers Make

Zero-hours holiday pay is one of the most common sources of payroll error in the UK. The most frequent mistakes include:

• Assuming zero-hours workers get no holiday. They do. The Working Time Regulations 1998 apply to all workers, including those on zero-hours contracts.
• Paying holiday pay at the wrong rate. If using the accrual method, the rate must be based on the 52-week average, not the pay rate at the time the holiday is taken.
• Failing to show rolled-up pay as a separate payslip item. If using rolled-up holiday pay, it must appear as a distinct line on the payslip. Bundling it into the hourly rate without disclosure is not compliant.
• Ignoring the 104-week lookback. If a worker has fewer than 52 weeks of paid service, the employer must look back further — up to 104 weeks — to calculate the average.

What Is Changing: The Employment Rights Act 2025

The Employment Rights Act 2025 includes guaranteed-hours provisions that will eventually require employers to offer zero-hours workers a contract reflecting their regular working hours. These provisions are not yet in force — the government’s current timetable points to 2027.

Until then, the 2024 holiday pay rules remain the framework. Employers should be aware that the direction of travel is towards greater certainty for zero-hours workers, not less.

How Leave Balance Helps

Leave Balance calculates holiday accrual automatically for zero-hours and irregular-hours workers at 12.07%, tracks the 52-week average for pay calculations, and flags when rolled-up holiday pay is not showing as a separate payslip line. It removes the spreadsheet arithmetic that leads to errors.