Most employees who work a normal 5-day week (ie Monday to Friday) are entitled to 5.6 weeks of holiday which is equal to 28 days in the working year. This can be inclusive or exclusive of bank and public holidays.
In England and Wales, there are currently 8 bank holidays, while in Scotland there are 9. While in England Wales bank holidays tend to be automatic public holidays ( the majority of workers are given the day off and the day is generally observed as a holiday) this is not the case in Scotland. In Scotland, there is much less uniformity regarding which bank and local holidays are granted as paid leave to employees. As a result, Scottish employment contracts will usually provide a holiday entitlement of a mixture of bank and local holidays and, according to the Scottish Government, most employees in Scotland do not have paid leave on all bank holidays.
Employers can use a 'leave year' or 'accrual system' to calculate an employee's holiday entitlement. Employers must tell their staff the dates for their statutory leave year as soon as they start working. An employee must take their paid holiday during the statutory leave year which can either be set out in the employment contract, or if the contract doesn't state, then the day the employee first started working. For example, a company's leave year could run from 1 January to 31 December if stated in the contract. An employee who starts part-way through a leave year will only be entitled to part of their total annual leave for the current leave year, depending on how much of the year is left.
The accrual system is where the employee gets one twelfth (1/12) of their leave in each month they've worked. For example, an employee who has worked for 3 months will be entitled to one quarter (¼) of their total leave (ie seven days if they work a normal 5-day week).