Working part of the year doesn’t mean your holiday shrinks to match.

The situation

A visiting music teacher at a school run by an educational trust worked on a permanent contract, but only during term time. She had no fixed weekly hours and was not paid at all during the school holidays. Her employer calculated her holiday payThe pay you receive for the paid annual leave you're entitled to under UK law, worth at least 5.6 weeks a year for most workers. It's usually calculated from your normal pay, though the exact method d... using a standard formula that reduced it in proportion to how much of the year she actually worked, following guidance many employers relied on at the time.

What the court found

The Supreme Court held that a permanent worker's statutory holiday entitlement of 5.6 weeks is not to be pro-rated down to reflect only the weeks actually worked. Holiday pay for someone in this position is instead calculated as an average of pay received in recent working weeks, ignoring weeks where nothing was earned. Worked out this way, the figure can come out higher than a simple proportion of the year worked, and in this case, it did.

For the fuller detail on how holiday entitlement builds up, including where the 2024 reforms fit alongside this case, see our guide on how much paid holiday you're entitled to and how it builds up.