NHS annual leave entitlement

Section 13 entitlement table

Entitlement increases at 5 and 10 years of NHS service. The figures below are calendar days of annual leave at full-time hours (37.5 hours a week). Public holidays are on top of these figures.

Source: NHS Terms and Conditions handbook, Section 13 — Annual leave and general public holidays. Last verified 2026-05-12.

How public holidays interact with leave

Section 13 treats public holidays as separate from annual leave: they're a top-up to the basic 27/29/33 day entitlement, not a deduction from it. Standard public holiday counts vary by nation. England and Wales NHS staff get 8 days a year. Scotland gets 9 (the extra is 2nd January or St Andrew's Day, depending on local custom). Northern Ireland gets 10 (St Patrick's Day on 17 March and Battle of the Boyne on 12 July, alongside the eight shared with England and Wales).

For ward staff and other shift workers, working a bank holiday earns the basic shift pay plus a Section 2 unsocial hours enhancement (60% on top of basic for Bands 4 to 9). You also get a day off in lieu at a later date. For day-shift office and clinical staff who don't work bank holidays, the day is paid as normal time with no enhancement.

One-off bank holidays — coronations, royal funerals, World Cup celebrations — are added to the standard count when they happen. The 2026 calendar includes a one-off Scotland-only "World Cup bank holiday" on 15 June. England, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have an equivalent for 2026. These additional days are usually notified by your Trust ahead of time and added to your leave balance, not folded into annual leave.

Bank holidays in 2026

The dates below are the official UK bank holidays for each nation in 2026, taken from the GOV.UK feed. NHS Trusts apply these dates as the basis of the public holiday element of your annual leave package.

Source: GOV.UK bank holidays (official feed). Substitute days happen when a bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday — the day off in lieu moves to the next available weekday.

Pro-rata leave for part-time staff

Part-time NHS staff get a proportion of the full-time entitlement based on their contracted weekly hours divided by 37.5. The split applies to annual leave and to public holidays alike, so there's no advantage to working part-time on days that include bank holidays — you'd get the same total annual leave whichever days you worked.

Worked example. A nurse with 7 years' NHS service moves to a 22.5-hour-a-week part-time contract. Their full-time entitlement is 29 days annual leave plus 8 public holidays (37 days total in England). Their part-time entitlement is 37 × (22.5/37.5) = 22.2 days, which most Trusts convert to hours: 22.2 × 7.5 = 166.5 hours. They book leave in hours, not days, because their working day varies between long shifts and short shifts.

Trusts typically use NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) to track entitlement in hours for part-time staff. If your team is on a different rostering platform (Allocate, RotaGeek, HealthRoster), the principle is the same but the field name might be different.

When entitlement increases

The two service jumps are at 5 and 10 years of reckonable NHS service. Reckonable service is continuous NHS employment, with short breaks under 12 months not resetting the clock. Time across the four UK NHS systems counts as one. A nurse who worked 4 years in NHS Wales then moved to NHS England the next month would hit their first leave tier increase a year later, not 5 years.

The increase happens automatically on the anniversary of your continuous service. Your Trust's HR or ESR team updates your entitlement at the start of the leave year that includes your anniversary. If you cross a tier mid-year (your 5th anniversary falls in October but the leave year started in April), the new entitlement is applied to the full leave year, not pro-rated to the remaining months.

Booking and carrying leave over

Most Trusts use a "request and approve" model: you propose dates, your line manager confirms based on rota cover. The handbook expects requests to be made with reasonable notice (typically twice the duration of the leave: a fortnight's notice for a week off, a month for two weeks). Refusal is rare and usually only on rota cover grounds. Religious festivals and family events have standing priority in most local agreements.

Up to 5 days of annual leave can be carried into the next leave year as standard, with local agreement to carry more in exceptional circumstances. The Working Time Regulations underpin 20 days of statutory minimum leave that must be taken in the year unless prevented by sickness or family leave, but the Agenda for Change figure is well above that minimum so the rule rarely bites. Returning from maternity leave or long-term sickness, you can normally carry all unused leave.

Leaving the NHS means a pay-in-lieu calculation: any leave you've accrued but not taken is paid as part of your final salary. Resigning mid-year, the accrual is calculated from the start of the leave year to your last day. If you've taken more leave than you've accrued, the Trust can recover the difference from your final pay.