Holiday pay when nobody works the same week twice
How entitlement accrues for irregular hours and part-year workers, what rolled-up holiday pay is and who it is allowed for, and the rounding rule people miss.
Covers · · 6 min read
Holiday is the single most commonly miscalculated thing in hospitality payroll, and the reason is structural rather than careless: the statutory entitlement is expressed in WEEKS, and a large part of this workforce does not have a normal week.
The accrual method
For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, holiday entitlement for irregular hours workers and part-year workers accrues at 12.07% of the hours actually worked in each pay period.
The figure is not arbitrary. Statutory leave is 5.6 weeks out of a 46.4-week working year, and 5.6 divided by 46.4 is 12.07%. Anybody who tells you the number is a rule of thumb has it backwards — it is the arithmetic, and the rule of thumb was what came before it.
There is a rounding rule that is easy to miss: where entitlement comes out as part of an hour, round down below thirty minutes and up at thirty minutes or more.
Rolled-up holiday pay is allowed again — for some people
Rolled-up holiday pay means adding an amount on top of the hourly rate rather than paying leave when it is taken. It was unlawful for many years and is now permitted — but ONLY for irregular hours workers and part-year workers.
For a salaried head chef on fixed hours it remains unlawful. This is the error to watch for in a venue that employs both: a payroll setting applied at site level rather than per worker quietly rolls up holiday for everyone, and it is wrong for half of them.
If you do roll it up, it has to be itemised on the payslip as holiday pay. An uplift nobody can see on the slip is, in a dispute, an uplift that never happened.
Who counts as irregular
It turns on whether the hours in each pay period are wholly or mostly variable under the contract. A casual on a zero-hours arrangement plainly qualifies. Somebody contracted to a fixed twenty hours who often picks up more does not automatically — their contracted hours are not variable, the extra is overtime, and treating them as irregular is a common and expensive mistake.
Acas has worked examples, which are the fastest way to check your own case: Irregular hours and part-year workers