NHS Annual Leave Calculator 2026/27
Last updated: 24 October 2026 · Figures verified against the NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular.
The calculator
NHS Annual Leave Calculator
Agenda for Change leave tiers for England: 27, 29 or 33 days plus 8 bank holidays, pro rata in hours for part-time staff and for part of a leave year.
Estimate only. The calculator applies the Agenda for Change Section 13 tiers for England (27, 29 or 33 days plus 8 bank holidays) pro rata in hours. Your trust's leave year, booking rules and carry-over policy can change how the figure is used in practice. Always check your contract and ESR record.
Sources: Agenda for Change handbook Section 13 (England tiers); NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular. Our annual leave guide explains the rules behind the maths.
The formula, in plain terms
Annual leave in the NHS is worked out in hours, and that single choice explains most of the confusion around part-time leave. A day of leave is not a fixed unit for everyone, because staff work different shift lengths. The system therefore starts from a full-time week of 37.5 hours in England, which is five days of 7.5 hours, and converts every entitlement into hours before it pro-rates anything. Your annual leave in hours is your tier in days multiplied by 7.5, and your bank holiday entitlement is 8 days multiplied by 7.5, which is 60 hours for a full-time member of staff.
Part-time staff then take a fraction of that full-time figure. The fraction is called whole-time equivalent, or WTE, and it is your contracted hours divided by 37.5. A 22.5-hour contract is 22.5 divided by 37.5, which is 0.6 WTE, so you get 60 percent of the full-time leave. A 30-hour contract is 0.8 WTE. Nothing else changes: the tier, the bank holidays and the 7.5-hour day stay the same, and only the fraction moves. That is why two people on the same tier can have very different leave totals, and why comparing leave in days alone, without hours, misleads part-timers.
Mid-year changes use the same logic a second time. Leave accrues evenly across the leave year, so if you work only part of the year, you accrue only that part of the entitlement. Six months gives you half, three months gives you a quarter, and one month gives you a twelfth. The calculator shows both numbers side by side: the full-year entitlement, so you can see what the post is worth, and the accrued figure for the months you actually work, so you can see what you can take before you leave or before the year ends. Keep both in mind when you book, because booking against the full-year figure before you have accrued it is how an overpayment on leaving happens.
Annual leave by service length, full-time
The table below is the whole England position at a glance. Every figure in it comes from the Agenda for Change tiers in the verified pay data: 27 days plus 8 bank holidays with under five years of service, 29 plus 8 from five years, and 33 plus 8 from ten years. Hours are days multiplied by 7.5, which is the standard full-time day on a 37.5-hour week.
| Reckonable NHS service | Annual leave | Bank holidays | Total leave | Total hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 5 years | 27 days | 8 days | 35 days | 262.5 hours |
| 5 to 9 years | 29 days | 8 days | 37 days | 277.5 hours |
| 10 years or more | 33 days | 8 days | 41 days | 307.5 hours |
The jump that surprises people is the one at ten years. Moving from the middle tier to the top tier adds four days, while moving from the first tier to the second adds two. In hours that is 15 hours for the first step and 30 hours for the second. If you are close to a threshold, it is worth checking the exact date your reckonable service crosses it, because a single month can be worth 30 hours of leave. Your ESR record is the place to check: if an earlier NHS post is missing from it, your tier, and therefore your leave, will be wrong until it is corrected.
Reckonable service is broader than service with your current trust. It generally includes time with any NHS organisation, and it usually survives a career break, though the break itself does not normally add to the count. Agency work for an NHS trust through an agency does not usually count in the same way as directly employed service, so if your history mixes agency and substantive posts, ask payroll to confirm which periods count. The same check matters after a move between trusts: service should travel with you, but only if the receiving trust records it.
Part-time staff: the hours method, worked through
Part-time leave is where the hours method earns its keep. If leave were worked out in whole days, a part-timer who works three days a week would face an awkward question every time they booked: is a day of leave a day they would have worked, or a calendar day? Hours remove that question. You have a pot of hours, and each day you take off costs you the hours of the shift you would have worked that day. A 7.5-hour shift costs 7.5 hours from the pot, and a 12-hour shift costs 12 hours. The pot is fair across shift patterns because it is built from your contracted hours in the first place.
Take the classic three-day-a-week pattern: 22.5 hours, which is 0.6 WTE, for a new starter. Annual leave is 27 days multiplied by 0.6, which is 16.2 days, and 16.2 multiplied by 7.5 gives 121.5 hours. Bank holidays are 8 days multiplied by 0.6, which is 4.8 days, or 36 hours. The total pot is 21 days, or 157.5 hours. Our annual leave guide shows the same example, and the calculator reproduces it exactly, which is a useful cross-check if you want to test the tool before trusting it with your own figures.
Now take four days a week: 30 hours, which is 0.8 WTE, after six years of service. Annual leave is 29 days multiplied by 0.8, which is 23.2 days, or 174 hours. Bank holidays are 8 days multiplied by 0.8, which is 6.4 days, or 48 hours. The total is 29.6 days, or 222 hours. Notice that the part-timer's bank holiday pot is not eight days off. It is 48 hours added to the pot, to be used as leave, because a part-timer may or may not be rostered on a bank holiday itself. If you are rostered off on a bank holiday anyway, you have not lost anything, and the hours in your pot reflect that fairly.
One more part-time point matters for anyone comparing a part-time post with a full-time one. Your hourly rate does not change when you work part-time, and neither does your band. A part-time Band 5 nurse earns the same hourly rate as a full-time Band 5 nurse at the same step; only the total pay is pro-rated, in the same way as leave. Our part-time pay calculator works through the pay side of that equation, using the same WTE fraction, so the two tools agree with each other by construction.
Starting, leaving and changing hours mid-year
Starting mid-year is the simplest mid-year case. Your leave year runs from a fixed date set by your trust, often 1 April, and your entitlement for your first part-year is the full-year figure multiplied by the months remaining. A full-time new starter who joins with six months of the leave year left accrues half of 35 days, which is 17.5 days, or 131.25 hours. A full-time new starter who joins with one month left accrues a twelfth of 35 days, which is 2.92 days, or 21.88 hours. Small numbers like that are easy to dismiss, but they are real leave, and they are worth taking or carrying over under your trust's rules rather than losing.
Leaving mid-year works the same way in reverse, and it is the case that creates payslip surprises. If you leave after six months, you have accrued half your entitlement. If you have taken more than that, the excess is normally deducted from your final pay. If you have taken less, the balance is usually paid out. The trap is bank holidays that fall after your leaving date: your trust's leaver policy decides how those are treated, and it is worth asking before you resign rather than discovering the answer in your final payslip. The same pro-rating applies when you change between full-time and part-time hours mid-year, except that each period is calculated separately at its own WTE fraction, and the two periods are added together.
Changing hours mid-year deserves a worked example, because it catches people out. Suppose you work full-time for six months as a new starter, then move to 0.6 WTE for the remaining six months. The first half gives you half of 262.5 hours, which is 131.25 hours. The second half gives you half of the 0.6 WTE figure of 157.5 hours, which is 78.75 hours. Your leave for the year is 210 hours in total, not the full-time figure and not the part-time figure, but the sum of the two halves. If your trust calculates it as a single annual figure at your leaving WTE fraction, ask payroll to show the split, because the split method is the one that matches how the leave actually accrued.
Other types of leave interact with annual leave, but they do not change the entitlement itself. Parental leave is unpaid and separate, carer's leave is a one-week statutory right, and sick pay runs on its own rules. Time on maternity, paternity or sick leave normally continues to accrue annual leave, so returning staff should check that their leave pot reflects the full period, not just the time they were physically at work. If your pot looks short after a long absence, that is the first thing to query.
Bank holidays, unsocial hours and the leave pot
Bank holidays sit in a slightly odd place in NHS leave. They are part of your entitlement, but they are also days when many services run a reduced roster and some staff work. If you work on a bank holiday, the day is treated as an unsocial hours period: for Bands 1 to 7, overtime on a bank holiday is paid at double time, and unsocial enhancements apply as set out on our unsocial hours and overtime page. Working the bank holiday does not remove it from your leave pot, because the pot is an hours total, not a list of specific calendar days. You are paid for working the day, and your leave hours remain yours to take another time.
For full-time staff the bank holiday position is simple: you get eight days, or 60 hours, on top of your annual leave, and if you are not rostered on a bank holiday, it costs you nothing from the pot. For part-time staff it is fairer but harder to explain at first glance: you get the bank holidays pro rata as hours in your pot, whether or not your normal working days include bank holidays. A part-timer who never works Mondays, when most bank holidays fall, still gets the pro-rata hours, because the alternative would penalise staff purely for their working pattern. That is the point of the hours method, and it is worth explaining to any manager who queries a part-timer's leave balance.
One practical consequence follows. When you book leave, think in hours, not in days. A week off for a full-time member of staff on five 7.5-hour shifts costs 37.5 hours from the pot. A week off for a part-timer on three 7.5-hour shifts costs 22.5 hours. Both are a week away from work, but they cost different amounts of leave, because the pot was built from different contracted hours. Staff who book in days and compare totals with full-time colleagues will always feel short-changed; staff who book in hours will see that the system is proportional, even if the headline day counts look different.
What the calculator does not cover
The calculator is deliberately narrow: it answers the entitlement question, and it leaves the local questions to your trust. Booking windows, notice periods for leave requests, maximum carry-over at year-end, and any scheme that lets you buy extra leave or sell leave back are all local policy, and they vary enough between trusts that a national calculator cannot safely state them. The same applies to the treatment of bank holidays after a leaving date, and to the exact start date of your trust's leave year. If the calculator's figure and your ESR record disagree, trust ESR and ask payroll to explain the gap, because the calculator cannot see your contract.
Two national variations need a clear flag. Wales is widely reported to give one extra day at each tier, which would be 28, 30 and 34 days plus bank holidays, but the verified pay data marks that as a figure to confirm locally, so the calculator does not build it in. Welsh staff should run the calculator, then add the extra day if their health board confirms it, which is 7.5 hours at full-time, pro rata for part-timers. Scotland is a different case: the 36-hour week from April 2026 changes the hours maths itself, because a full-time day is 7.2 hours rather than 7.5, and the Scotland leave tiers are not in the verified data used here. Scottish staff should use their local figures, and our Scotland pay guide explains the 36-hour change for pay, which is the same change that affects leave hours.
Compressed hours and term-time working also sit outside the calculator, but for a reassuring reason: neither changes your total leave in hours. Compressed hours rearrange the same weekly hours into fewer, longer shifts, so your leave pot in hours is unchanged, even though each day you take off costs more hours. Term-time working, where you work fewer weeks of the year, is usually handled by spreading your pay and leave across the year under a local arrangement, and the total hours still follow the same pro-rata principle. If your trust offers either pattern, ask for your leave figure in hours in writing, and compare it with the calculator's full-year hours for your contracted pattern.
Finally, a note on flexible working more broadly. A change to your hours, your shift pattern or your working location can change your WTE fraction, and therefore your leave, even when your band and service stay the same. Re-run the calculator after any contractual change, and check the new figure against your next ESR statement. Small contractual changes are the most common cause of leave errors, because they are easy to agree verbally and slow to reach payroll.
Worked examples, checked line by line
The table below gathers every worked example on this page in one place, so you can check the calculator against them. Each row uses only the verified tiers and the 7.5-hour day, and each row can be reproduced by entering the same inputs into the calculator.
| Pattern | Annual leave | Bank holidays | Total for the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time, under 5 years | 27 days (202.5 hours) | 8 days (60 hours) | 35 days (262.5 hours) |
| Full-time, 5 to 9 years | 29 days (217.5 hours) | 8 days (60 hours) | 37 days (277.5 hours) |
| Full-time, 10 years or more | 33 days (247.5 hours) | 8 days (60 hours) | 41 days (307.5 hours) |
| 0.6 WTE (22.5 hours), under 5 years | 16.2 days (121.5 hours) | 4.8 days (36 hours) | 21 days (157.5 hours) |
| 0.8 WTE (30 hours), 5 to 9 years | 23.2 days (174 hours) | 6.4 days (48 hours) | 29.6 days (222 hours) |
| 0.8 WTE, 10 years or more, 6 months only | 13.2 days (99 hours) accrued | 3.2 days (24 hours) accrued | 16.4 days (123 hours) accrued |
Check the last row against the calculator: select the 10-year tier, enter 30 hours and 6 months, and the accrued line should read 16.4 days (123 hours), which is half of the full-year 0.8 WTE figure of 32.8 days (246 hours). Check the first row the same way: full-time hours, 12 months, under 5 years, and the hero boxes should read 262.5 hours and 35 days. If either check fails, the calculator has a fault, not a rounding difference, because every figure here is exact to one decimal place in days and to one decimal place in hours, apart from the one-month accrual of 21.88 hours, which is 262.5 divided by 12, rounded to two decimal places.
Before you book: a short checklist
One, confirm your reckonable service date in ESR, including earlier NHS posts. Two, confirm your contracted hours and your WTE fraction, especially after a recent change. Three, run the calculator for your full year and for any part-year, and note both figures. Four, check your trust's leave year start date, booking window and carry-over limit, because those decide when the hours can actually be used. Five, if you are leaving, ask payroll how bank holidays after your leaving date are treated before you hand in notice. For the pay side of the same questions, see part-time pay, what your payslip means and how Agenda for Change works, and for tax on any leave payout, see what your tax code means.
Frequently asked questions
How much annual leave do NHS staff get?
Full-time staff in England get 27 days plus 8 bank holidays on appointment, 29 days plus 8 bank holidays after 5 years of reckonable NHS service, and 33 days plus 8 bank holidays after 10 years, under Agenda for Change. Part-time staff get the same entitlement pro rata, worked out in hours.
How is NHS annual leave calculated for part-time staff?
Pro rata in hours. Take the full-time days for your service tier, multiply by your whole-time equivalent fraction (contracted hours divided by 37.5 in England), then convert to hours at 7.5 hours a day. For example, 0.6 WTE on appointment gives 16.2 days (121.5 hours) of annual leave plus 4.8 days (36 hours) of bank holiday entitlement.
Do bank holidays come on top of annual leave?
Yes. The 8 bank holidays are in addition to the 27, 29 or 33 days of annual leave. For part-time staff the bank holiday hours are added to the leave pot, because a part-timer's normal days off may or may not fall on a bank holiday.
How does the calculator handle starting or leaving mid-year?
It pro-rates your full-year entitlement by the months you work in the leave year. Enter the number of months, and the calculator shows both the full-year figure and the accrued figure. For example, a full-time new starter who works 6 months accrues half of 35 days, which is 17.5 days (131.25 hours).
Does previous NHS service count towards extra leave?
Yes, if it is reckonable NHS service. Time with any NHS organisation generally counts towards the 5-year and 10-year thresholds, and it usually survives a career break. Check your ESR record shows your full history, because a missing earlier post can leave you on the wrong tier.
What if I work in Wales or Scotland?
This calculator uses the England Agenda for Change tiers and the 37.5-hour week. Wales is widely reported to give one extra day at each tier, but you should confirm that with your health board. Scotland moved to a 36-hour week in April 2026, so its hours maths differs; Scottish staff should check their local leave rules rather than using the England figures here.
Can I carry unused leave into the next year?
That depends on your trust. Agenda for Change sets the entitlement, but booking windows, carry-over limits and any buy-back or sell-back scheme are local policy. If you are heading for year-end with a large balance, talk to your line manager early, because many trusts allow only limited carry-over.
Does overtime increase my annual leave?
No. Leave is based on your contracted hours, not on extra shifts worked. Hours above 37.5 a week in England are overtime for pay purposes, but the calculator treats 37.5 hours as full-time for leave, so extra hours do not add leave days.
Source: NHS Employers 2026/27 pay award announcement.
Source: Health Careers NHS pay rates.
This is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the NHS. Figures are for England under Agenda for Change for 2026/27 unless stated; Scotland and Wales have their own arrangements, as flagged above. The calculator is an estimate only: always check your contract and ESR record for your actual hours, service and tier.