Unused Annual Leave Payout: What the NHS Pays When You Leave

Last updated: 6 November 2026 · Figures verified against the NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular.

By the NHS Bands Pay editorial team

Leaving the NHS brings a long list of small money questions, and the leave payout is the one most people get wrong. It is not a bonus, and it is not a favour from a manager. It is pay for leave you earned and did not take, and the maths is simple once you know the three numbers that decide it: your entitlement for the part of the year you worked, the leave you actually took, and your daily rate. This guide works through all three, with the 2026/27 figures by band, four worked examples, and the tax position, so you can check the final payslip line by line.

The payout sits inside your final pay, not beside it. Payroll works out everything you are owed up to your leaving date, including unused annual leave and any unsocial-hours or overtime payments, and pays it with the next monthly run. Our guide to final pay when leaving covers the whole leaving calculation; this page deals only with the leave element, in the detail it deserves.

How the payout is worked out

Three steps, in order. First, your entitlement for the part of the leave year you worked. Leave accrues evenly through the year, so the entitlement is pro rated to your leaving date. The leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so leaving at the end of September means half a year worked and half the annual entitlement accrued. Second, subtract the leave you actually took, including bank holidays that fell on your working days. Third, multiply the days left by your daily rate, which is your annual salary divided by 365. That daily rate is the same one payroll uses for a part month of work, so learning one number answers two questions.

Two details catch people out. One, the entitlement includes bank holidays, so the 8 bank holidays are part of the total, not extra on top of the payout. Two, totals are worked from the unrounded daily rate and rounded at the end, so a total can differ by a penny from the rounded daily rate multiplied by the days. If your own workings and the payslip differ by a penny, that is usually why. Anything larger is worth querying.

The payout is worked from basic pay. If you receive London weighting, ask payroll whether it is included in your leave payment, because practice varies between trusts, and the answer changes the figure. Unsocial-hours enhancements and overtime are not part of the leave payout: those are paid when the hours are worked, and they appear on the final payslip as their own lines. See the unsocial hours and overtime guide for the rates that apply to shifts in your last weeks.

Your leave entitlement in 2026/27

Agenda for Change sets the entitlement by reckonable NHS service, under Section 13. The tiers are the same for every Agenda for Change role, from Band 2 to Band 9, and the only thing that changes them is length of service. Part-time staff get the same entitlement pro rata, worked out in hours, which the annual leave calculator will do for any contracted hours.

A standard NHS day is 7.5 hours, which is how the day figures become hour figures: 27 days are 202.5 hours, 29 days are 217.5 hours, 33 days are 247.5 hours, and the 8 bank holidays add 60 hours. Previous NHS service generally counts towards the 5-year and 10-year thresholds, so time with any NHS organisation counts, 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, and the wrong tier means the wrong payout.

Two national differences are worth knowing. Wales is widely reported to give one extra day at each tier, but confirm that with your health board before relying on it. Scotland moved to a 36-hour week in April 2026, so its hours maths differs, and Scottish staff should check their local leave rules rather than using the England hours figures on this page. Northern Ireland staff should note the 2026/27 award of 3.3% is recommended but not yet implemented there, so pay figures for NI posts are still on the earlier scale until that changes.

What one day of leave is worth

Your daily rate is your annual salary divided by 365. The table below lists it at every band and pay point for 2026/27 in England, on the 37.5-hour week. Band 2 is a single spot rate, so entry and top are the same figure. Bands 3 and 4 have two points, and Bands 5 to 9 have three: entry, intermediate and top.

The gap between bands is wider than most staff expect. One day of untaken leave is worth £69.24 at Band 2 and £87.87 at the entry point of Band 5, but £154.84 at the top of Band 7 and £355.57 at the top of Band 9. That is why the same number of untaken days can be a few hundred pounds for one leaver and several thousand for another, and why it is worth counting the days properly rather than waving the balance through.

Five days is a useful yardstick because it is roughly one working week of leave, and it is the size of balance many leavers carry. At the top of Band 5, five days are worth £534.84. At the top of Band 6 they are worth £659.14, at the top of Band 7 £774.18, and at the top of Band 9 £1,777.85. Double those figures for ten days, halve them for two and a half days, and you have a quick sense of any balance before you do the exact maths.

Worked examples

Four examples cover the cases payroll sees most often: a full-timer leaving mid-year with leave left, an entry-band leaver, a leaver who took too much, and a part-timer. Every figure below is worked from the unrounded daily rate and rounded at the end.

Example 1: Band 5 top, ten years of service, leaves at the end of September

A nurse at the top of Band 5, on £39,043 a year, with ten or more years of service, has 41 days of entitlement for the full year. Leaving six months into the leave year, at the end of September, gives half of that: 20.5 days accrued. She has taken 15 days, so she is owed 5.5 days. Her daily rate is £39,043 divided by 365, which is £106.97, and 5.5 days are worth £588.32. In hours, 5.5 days are 41.25 hours at 7.5 hours a day. This is the example our final pay guide uses, and the figure is the same here.

Example 2: Band 2, under four years of service, leaves after nine months

A porter on the Band 2 spot rate of £25,272 a year, with under four years of service, has 35 days of entitlement for the full year. Leaving after nine months gives three quarters of that: 26.25 days accrued. He has taken 20 days, so he is owed 6.25 days. His daily rate is £25,272 divided by 365, which is £69.24, and 6.25 days are worth £432.74. Quarter days are real leave, and payroll pays them, so do not round your own workings down to whole days before you compare them with the payslip.

Example 3: Band 6 top, five years of service, took too much leave

A district nurse at the top of Band 6, on £48,117 a year, with five or more years of service, has 37 days of entitlement for the full year. Leaving after three months gives a quarter of that: 9.25 days accrued. She has taken 12 days, so she has taken 2.75 days more than she had accrued. Her daily rate is £48,117 divided by 365, which is £131.83, and the excess is £362.53 deducted from her final pay. This is the part that surprises leavers, and it is the reason to check the leave balance in ESR before the last day rather than discovering the deduction on the payslip.

Example 4: Part-time, 0.6 whole-time equivalent, Band 5 entry

A healthcare assistant on a 0.6 contract at the Band 5 entry point has a part-time annual salary of £19,243.80, which is 60% of £32,073. Her full-year entitlement is 60% of 35 days, which is 21 days, and leaving six months into the year gives half of that: 10.5 days accrued. She has taken 8 days, so she is owed 2.5 days. Her part-time daily rate is £19,243.80 divided by 365, which is £52.72, and 2.5 days are worth £131.81. Her leave day is 4.5 hours, which is 60% of the 7.5-hour standard day, so 2.5 days are 11.25 hours. The annual leave calculator works out the entitlement in hours for any contracted hours, and the part-time pay guide covers the wider pay picture for reduced hours.

Part-time staff

Part-time staff are paid for unused leave on exactly the same basis as full-time staff, with every figure scaled by the whole-time equivalent fraction. Take the full-time days for your service tier, multiply by your fraction, then convert to hours at 7.5 hours a day for a full-time day, scaled the same way. A 0.6 contract gives 21 days from a 35-day entitlement, and a 0.8 contract gives 28 days. 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, so the pot already includes them rather than adding them later. Overtime does not add leave: leave is based on contracted hours, so hours above 37.5 a week are overtime for pay purposes but do not add leave days. If your contracted hours changed during the year, ask payroll which figure they used, because a mid-year change splits the year into two different entitlements.

Bank holidays on leaving

Bank holidays sit inside the entitlement, so they are pro rated with the rest of it. Leaving six months into the year means half the annual leave days and half the bank holiday days have accrued. An untaken bank holiday is paid in the same way as an untaken day of annual leave, at your daily rate, and a bank holiday taken in excess of accrual is deducted in the same way. The one to watch is a bank holiday that fell on one of your working days and was never taken: it is easy to miss on the leave record, and it is worth exactly the same as any other day. Check your ESR record before your last day, and count the bank holidays separately from the annual leave days, so a missing one shows up.

When you took too much leave

The payout works in reverse, and payroll can deduct the excess from your final pay at the same daily rate. Taking 25 days in the first three months of the leave year and then leaving at the end of June, with only a quarter of the year's entitlement accrued, leaves a real debt, and the deduction appears on the final payslip. The same applies to bank holidays taken in excess. If the deduction looks wrong, check the payslip first, line by line, against your own workings: the days in post that month at your daily rate, the unused leave days owed, and any unsocial-hours or overtime payments for shifts worked in the final period. If a line looks wrong, contact payroll with the rota and the leave balance from ESR, because most errors are coding mistakes that payroll can correct in a supplementary payment. If payroll will not correct it, the formal route is a pay dispute through your manager and HR, with your union if you are a member, and our guide to NHS pay disputes sets out the steps.

Tax on the payout

The payout is taxed as normal pay through PAYE, with National Insurance and student loan deductions on top where they apply. It is pay for leave you have earned, so it is taxed as earnings, and the first £30,000 tax-free exemption for termination payments does not apply to it: that exemption covers genuine termination payments such as redundancy pay, not pay for accrued leave. Because PAYE is cumulative, the tax on a final pay can look odd, and the cleanest way to see the tax on the payout itself is the marginal view, treating it as an extra payment in the month on top of pay already taxed.

Take ten days of untaken leave at the top of Band 7, on £56,515 a year. The gross payout is £1,548.36. As a basic-rate taxpayer that gives £309.67 in tax at 20% and £40.07 in National Insurance at 8%, and no Plan 2 student loan deduction, because the amount sits below the monthly Plan 2 threshold of £2,448.75, leaving £1,198.62. Whether a pension contribution is deducted from the payout varies, so check your final payslip rather than assuming: if a contribution was deducted, the payment counted as pensionable pay for that month, and if it was not, it did not. If you leave part way through the tax year and have paid too much tax in earlier months, the final pay can produce a tax refund rather than a tax charge, and the P45 carries the year-to-date figures to your next employer so the position corrects itself. Our guide to what your tax code means explains how to read the code on that final payslip.

Carry-over: the part with no national rule

Carry-over is the one part of this subject that cannot be stated as a national rule. Agenda for Change sets the entitlement, but booking windows, maximum carry-over and any buy-back or sell-back scheme are local policy, and they vary enough between trusts that no national figure can be stated. Many trusts allow only limited carry-over, and anything beyond that can be lost at year-end, so if you are heading for year-end with a large balance, talk to your line manager early. Carried-over days are paid on the same basis as any other unused leave if you then leave with them still untaken, and lost if your trust did not allow them to be carried in the first place. The position is different when you leave: untaken accrued leave is normally paid out rather than carried anywhere, because your employment is ending. Do not assume a large balance can be carried into the next year to avoid losing it, and do not assume it will be paid without asking: the local policy decides, and the time to find out is before the year ends, not after.

Time off in lieu and other balances

Time off in lieu is not annual leave, and the rules are not the same. Banked TOIL is usually paid at plain time or taken before leaving, and the arrangement should be agreed with your manager, because TOIL is not annual leave and the local rules vary. The same local-variation warning applies to any flexi-time balance. Expenses and mileage claims must be submitted before the payroll cut-off, or they fall into a separate payment after you leave, and hours worked after the cut-off for the final pay run are paid in a supplementary payment rather than with the final pay itself. Check the cut-off date with payroll in your last week. If you are paid in lieu of notice, your leaving date for pay purposes is the date the notice period would have ended, and your pension and leave calculations run to that date: see our guide to pay in lieu of notice for the full position.

What to check before your last day

Five checks, in order. One, confirm your leave balance in ESR, including bank holidays, and your reckonable service date, including earlier NHS posts. Two, confirm your leaving date and your notice position, and whether any part of the notice is being paid in lieu. Three, work out your own figure for the leave payout using the tables on this page, so you have a number to compare with the payslip. Four, check the payroll cut-off date, and submit any expenses, mileage and TOIL claims before it. Five, keep your last few payslips and the final one, because you need them to prove what was paid and what was not, and note the date you raised any query, because payroll queries are easier to chase with a date attached. Your P45 follows after the final pay has been processed, usually within a few days of that pay date, and if nothing has arrived by the second usual pay date after you left, contact payroll, because a missing final pay is almost always a processing delay rather than a decision not to pay.

Frequently asked questions

Do I get paid for unused annual leave when I leave the NHS?

Yes. Untaken annual leave is paid when you leave, at your daily rate for each day you are owed. First work out your entitlement for the part of the leave year you worked: Agenda for Change gives 27 days of annual leave plus 8 bank holidays at up to 4 years of service, 29 days plus 8 at 5 years, and 33 days plus 8 at 10 years, pro rated for the months in post. Then subtract the leave you took. What is left is paid in your final pay at your daily rate, which is your annual salary divided by 365. A member of staff at the top of Band 5, on £39,043 a year, is owed £106.97 a day, so 5.5 days of untaken leave are worth £588.32. The same rule works in reverse: leave taken in excess of what you had accrued is normally deducted from the final pay.

How is the leave payout calculated?

Three steps, in order. One, your entitlement for the part of the leave year you worked: take your full-year entitlement for your service tier, 35, 37 or 41 days including bank holidays, and multiply it by the fraction of the leave year you worked. Two, subtract the leave you actually took, including bank holidays that fell on your working days. Three, multiply the days left by your daily rate, which is your annual salary divided by 365. The leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so leaving at the end of September means half a year worked and half the annual entitlement accrued. Part-time staff work the same steps on their pro-rata entitlement, and their daily rate is their part-time annual salary divided by 365.

How much is one day of unused leave worth?

It depends on your band and your pay point, because the daily rate is your annual salary divided by 365. At the bottom of the scale, a Band 2 member of staff on £25,272 a year has a daily rate of £69.24. A Band 5 nurse on the entry point of £32,073 has a daily rate of £87.87, and on the top point of £39,043 it is £106.97. At the top of Band 6, on £48,117, a day is worth £131.83, and at the top of Band 7, on £56,515, it is £154.84. At the top of Band 9, on £129,783, a day is worth £355.57. Five days of untaken leave are worth £346.19 at Band 2, £534.84 at the top of Band 5, £774.18 at the top of Band 7 and £1,777.85 at the top of Band 9. The full table on this page lists the daily rate at every band and pay point.

What happens if I took more leave than I had accrued?

Payroll can deduct the excess from your final pay, at the same daily rate. Leave accrues evenly through the leave year, so taking 12 days in the first three months and then leaving at the end of June, with only a quarter of the year's entitlement accrued, leaves a real debt. A member of staff at the top of Band 6, on £48,117 a year, who has 9.25 days accrued after three months and has taken 12 days owes 2.75 days, which is £362.53 deducted from the final pay. Check your leave balance in ESR before your last day, and if you have leave left, take it or confirm in writing that it will be paid, because a verbal promise from a manager is not a payslip line.

Is the leave payout taxed?

Yes, through PAYE in the normal way. The payout is pay for leave you have earned, so it is taxed as earnings, with National Insurance and student loan deductions on top where they apply. The first £30,000 tax-free exemption for termination payments does not apply to it, because that exemption covers genuine termination payments such as redundancy pay, not pay for accrued leave. Because PAYE is cumulative, the cleanest way to see the tax on the payout itself is the marginal view: treat it as an extra payment in the month, on top of pay already taxed. Ten days of untaken leave at the top of Band 7, on £56,515 a year, are worth £1,548.36 gross; as a basic-rate taxpayer that gives £309.67 in tax and £40.07 in National Insurance, with no Plan 2 student loan deduction because the amount sits below the monthly Plan 2 threshold, leaving £1,198.62. Whether a pension contribution is deducted from the payout varies, so check your final payslip rather than assuming.

Can I carry unused leave into the next year instead of being paid for it?

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, and they vary enough between trusts that no national figure can be stated. Many trusts allow only limited carry-over, and anything beyond that can be lost at year-end, so if you are heading for year-end with a large balance, talk to your line manager early. Carried-over days are paid on the same basis as any other unused leave if you then leave with them still untaken, and lost if your trust did not allow them to be carried in the first place. The position is different when you leave: untaken accrued leave is normally paid out rather than carried anywhere, because your employment is ending.

Do bank holidays count in the payout?

Yes. Bank holidays sit inside your entitlement, so an untaken bank holiday is paid in the same way as an untaken day of annual leave, at your daily rate. The 8 bank holidays are in addition to the 27, 29 or 33 days of annual leave, giving total entitlements of 35, 37 and 41 days. 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. If you leave part way through the year, the bank holidays are pro rated with the rest of the entitlement, so the same months-in-post fraction applies to them. Check your ESR record before your last day, because a bank holiday that fell on one of your working days and was never taken is easy to miss.

What happens to my leave if I move to another NHS trust instead of leaving?

Your reckonable service carries with you, so your leave tier does not reset: time with any NHS organisation generally counts towards the 5-year and 10-year thresholds. The untaken leave balance itself is a matter for the two trusts to settle. The usual position is that the old trust pays out untaken accrued leave in your final pay, and the new trust starts a fresh leave record for the rest of the year, but some trusts agree a transfer of the balance instead. Ask both HR departments before your transfer date, and get the answer in writing, because a balance that neither trust owns is the easiest one to lose. If the move is a secondment rather than a new employment, different rules can apply, so confirm whether your employment is ending or continuing before you assume anything about the payout.

Sources and independence

Source: GOV.UK, termination payments and tax.

Source: GOV.UK, redundancy rights and notice periods.

Source: NHS Employers, 2026/27 pay award announcement.

Source: Agenda for Change Terms and Conditions, Section 13, annual leave, and Handbook paragraph 19.2, notice periods.

NHS Bands Pay is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the NHS. Figures were verified against official sources on 6 November 2026 and can change, always confirm with the relevant official body before making financial decisions.