Statutory entitlement
All employees in the UK are entitled by law to a minimum of 5.6 weeks paid holiday per year. For an employee who works 5 days per week that is 28 paid days off per year. Part-time employees are entitled to a pro rata equivalent of 5.6 weeks paid holiday per annum.

An employee is paid at their normal rate of pay during leave and they start accruing holiday as soon as they start work.

The statutory entitlement to 28 days paid holiday is a relatively new law, which was introduced in April 2009.

Bank and public holidays
An employee does not have a statutory right to paid holiday on bank or public holidays. If an employer offers paid holiday on bank and public days it can count towards the employee's minimum holiday entitlement.Some employers may have been giving their employees all bank holidays as paid days off well before the introduction of the new law, and if this is the case the employee's statutory entitlement remains at 5.6 weeks, including the 8 bank holidays. Not 5.6 weeks plus 8 bank holidays.Part-time and temporary employees
What if my employee works part-time, how do I calculate their entitlement? The calculation is simple. Multiply the number of days the employee works per week by 5.6.

Example 1: Employee A works 2 days per week for employer B:

2 * 5.6 = 11.2

The annual holiday entitlement for employee A is 11.2 days.

If your PA is employed on a temporary basis they are also entitled to holiday. The calculation of the holiday entitlement for a temp employee in a full-time position is straight forward: divide 28 (the total number of days they would be entitled to if they were working the whole year) with 52 (the total number of weeks in a year). Then you simply multiply the answer with the number of weeks your employee has been contracted to work for.

Example 2: Employee C has been hired to work for employer D 5 days per week for 16 weeks:

28 / 52 = 0.54 * 16 = 8.6

The holiday entitlement for employee C is 8.6 days.

If your carer is employed on a part-time basis in a temporary position the calculation is a little bit more complex. First you need to establish the annual entitlement if they were working the whole year. As before, you simply multiply the number of days they work per week by 5.6. Then you follow the steps as outlined in the calculation above.

Example 3: Employee E has been employed to work for employer F for three days per week for 6 weeks:

5.6 * 3 = 16.8 / 52 = 0.323 * 6 = 1.9

Holiday entitlement for employee E is 1.9 days.

Pro rata
Pro rata is a word that pops up frequently whenever you're dealing with a part-time employment. Just like the salary will be calculated on a pro rata basis so will the holiday entitlement. Pro rata is Latin for "proportionally" or "a proportion of" and it simply means that the part-timer's entitlement is calculated according to what proportion of a full-time job their hours make up.