Holiday entitlement for a trades firm's first employee: 5.6 weeks, a 28-day cap and part-timers, worked

Your first apprentice asks, politely, how much holiday he gets. You say "the usual" and then realise you do not know what the usual is, whether the bank holidays come out of it, or what a four-day week does to the number.

What GOV.UK says

The GOV.UK page on holiday entitlement sets out these points:

• Almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year.
• On a five-day week that is at least 28 days.
• Statutory entitlement is limited to 28 days, so a six-day week is still 28.
• Part-time workers with regular hours get at least 5.6 weeks, which is fewer than 28 days. The page's own example: three days a week gives at least 16.8 days.
• Bank or public holidays do not have to be given as paid leave. An employer can count them as part of the 5.6 weeks.
• Irregular-hours and part-year workers are covered differently: leave builds up from hours already worked.
• An employer can offer more than the legal minimum.

The sum

The rule is one multiplication: days worked each week x 5.6, never more than 28. The cost column uses an example day's pay of £110, which is a figure I chose for the worked example, not a rate from GOV.UK.

Check: 28 x £110 is £3,080 because 28 x 100 is £2,800 and 28 x 10 is £280. 22.4 x £110 is 22.4 x 100 = £2,240 plus 22.4 x 10 = £224, so £2,464. 16.8 x £110 is £1,680 + £168 = £1,848. 11.2 x £110 is £1,120 + £112 = £1,232. The 2-day row is my own extra row; it uses the same formula as the page's three-day example.

Do bank holidays come out of it?

They can. The page says bank holidays need not be given as paid leave and that an employer can count them within the 5.6 weeks. So if your contract says the 28 days include the bank holidays, a Monday bank holiday uses one day of a five-day worker's 28. If it does not say so, the worker would have the bank holiday and the full 28 days on top. Put it in the written terms before the first day. I did not read how many bank holidays there are or which ones apply in each nation, so count them from the official list for your own year.

What to put in place

• Say which it is in the contract: statutory minimum including bank holidays, or more.
• Keep a holiday record per person: days entitled, days taken, days left. A tradesperson's diary is not enough once there are two or three on the books.
• Allow for the cost in your day rate. Paid holiday is a day you pay for and cannot bill: see the day rate calculator for self-employed trades.
• Budget the rest of a first hire. Alongside holiday come employer National Insurance and pensions: see the first employee and employer National Insurance and auto-enrolment for a first employee. Sickness is the other regular absence: see statutory sick pay from day one in a small trades firm.
• Do not guess for irregular workers. If someone has no fixed hours, the accrual method on the GOV.UK page applies, not the table above.

What I did not read

The GOV.UK page did not cover the leave year, carry-over, what happens to unused days when someone leaves, or how holiday pay is calculated when pay varies with overtime. I did not read the Working Time Regulations 1998 themselves, the rules for new starters part-way through a year, or whether the same rules apply to a genuinely self-employed subcontractor. Ask ACAS or your adviser about your own case.

Overlyft builds AI staff who join your trades team and keep the holiday record, work out each person's entitlement and flag a clash with a booked job, with the office manager approving every change.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Check the GOV.UK page and your adviser for your own firm.