If you are asking does overtime count towards holiday pay in the uk, here is the short answer: yes, if the overtime is regular. Your holiday pay is meant to reflect what you normally earn, not just your basic rate. So if you regularly work overtime, those extra hours should lift the pay you get for at least the first four weeks of your statutory holiday each year. A single one-off overtime shift, on the other hand, usually does not count — it is not part of your normal pay.

That distinction decides whether your holiday week is paid at your basic rate or at a higher rate including your usual overtime — and why a payslip showing only basic pay for a holiday week is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. This guide explains which overtime counts, how the four-week split works, how the 52-week average is worked out, and how to check your own payslip. All legal figures come from GOV.UK, linked at the end.

The Short Answer: Regular Overtime Counts, One-Off Overtime Usually Does Not

GOV.UK’s holiday pay guidance says that for workers with regular hours, at least four weeks of statutory entitlement must be paid at the worker’s “normal” rate of pay, and that normal rate includes regular overtime payments, along with commission and payments linked to length of service or professional qualifications. It does not usually include bonus payments. The remaining 1.6 weeks of the 5.6-week statutory minimum may be paid at the “basic” rate — your contracted rate without the extras — unless your contract says otherwise.

So the question is not “did I work overtime?” but “is overtime part of my normal working pattern?” Extra hours most weeks, month after month, are part of what you normally earn and should be reflected in holiday pay for the first four weeks. One extra Saturday in six months, because someone was off sick, is not normal pay, and leaving it out is unlikely to be wrong.

Many employers go further than the minimum and pay all 5.6 weeks at the normal rate. That is lawful — the four-week rule is a floor, not a ceiling — and if your contract promises holiday pay at average earnings for all your leave, that promise stands.

One clarification: this does not mean you are paid twice for the same hours. Overtime is paid when you work it; separately, your holiday week is paid once, at a rate reflecting your normal earnings including overtime.

How Much Holiday Are We Talking About?

Almost all workers in the UK are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. If you work five days a week, that is 28 days, and your employer may count bank holidays inside that 28 days. If you work part time on regular hours, you get the same 5.6 weeks, made up of fewer days — for example, three days a week gives 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days. Workers with irregular hours or part-year patterns accrue leave differently, at 12.07% of the hours they work in each pay period, but that accrual rule is a separate question from the one this article answers: once leave is taken, what rate is it paid at?

The 5.6 weeks split into two parts, and the split matters for overtime:

Part of statutory leave	How it must be paid	Overtime included?
First 4 weeks	At your “normal” rate of pay	Yes — regular overtime is included
Remaining 1.6 weeks	At your “basic” rate of pay, unless your contract says more	No, unless your contract promises it

For a full-time worker on 28 days, that means 20 days at the normal rate and 8 days at the basic rate, as the minimum. If your employer pays all 28 days at the normal rate, you are better off than the minimum requires. If it pays all 28 at basic rate only, the first 20 days are the problem.

Contractual holiday above the minimum is governed by the contract, not this rule: if your contract gives 33 days, the extra 5 days are paid as the contract says, which is often — but not always — the same rate as statutory leave.

Which Overtime Counts as “Regular”?

There is no fixed number of hours or weeks that makes overtime “regular”. The test is whether it is a normal, settled part of your working pattern. Tribunals and payroll look at how often it happens, how predictable it is, and whether it has become part of what you normally earn. Three kinds of overtime can count, and regularity matters more than the label:

Guaranteed overtime is overtime your contract requires you to work, and your employer is obliged to offer. Built into the job, it is clearly part of normal pay: 40 hours plus a guaranteed 5 overtime hours every week means those 5 hours belong in holiday pay for the first four weeks.

Non-guaranteed overtime is overtime your employer is not obliged to offer, but which you must work if it is offered. If a rota regularly includes extra shifts you cannot refuse, they are part of your normal pay even though the employer could, in theory, stop offering them.

Voluntary overtime is overtime you choose to work and your employer chooses to offer. People often assume voluntary means it does not count, but it can: if you regularly volunteer for extra shifts, so the extra pay has become a normal part of your earnings, it should be included for the first four weeks. A one-off shift here and there, with long gaps between, has not become part of your normal pay.

A useful way to test your own pattern is to look at the last few months of payslips. If overtime appears on most of them, in similar amounts, it is regular. If it appears once or twice, in very different amounts, it is probably occasional. If it appears in bursts, the 52-week average explained below does the fairest job: a burst lifts the average a little, but not as much as steady overtime every week. Seasonal overtime that repeats each year is a grey area — raise it with payroll rather than assuming either way, and keep the payslips, because the pattern is the evidence.

The 52-Week Average: How Variable Holiday Pay Is Worked Out

For workers whose pay varies — because their hours change, or because overtime, commission or shift allowances come and go — GOV.UK says a week’s pay is worked out from the average pay over the previous 52 weeks in which the worker was paid. That 52-week reference period is the mechanism that turns “regular overtime” into a number.

The steps are straightforward:

1. Add up the worker’s gross pay for the previous 52 weeks in which they were paid. Gross pay means pay before tax and National Insurance, and it includes regular overtime.
2. Divide that total by 52. The result is the average week’s pay, and that is the rate for a week’s holiday.
3. If a week had no pay at all — for example, a week of unpaid leave, or a week with no shifts on a zero-hours contract — skip it and count back a further week instead, up to a maximum look-back of 104 weeks, so that the average is still based on 52 paid weeks.
4. If the worker has been employed for less than 52 weeks, use the average of the full weeks they have actually worked.

For workers with regular hours and fixed pay, the calculation is simpler: a week’s pay is their normal week’s pay, and for the first four weeks that includes regular overtime. The 52-week average stops a single quiet or busy week from distorting the figure. Note too that the reference period runs backwards from the start of the holiday, not from the start of the leave year, so two holidays months apart can legitimately be paid at slightly different rates.

Worked Example 1: A Regular-Hours Worker With Steady Overtime

Emma works in a warehouse. Her contract is 37.5 hours a week at £15 an hour, and she regularly works 5 extra hours a week, paid at time and a half, £22.50 an hour. Her pattern has been steady for over a year.

Her basic weekly pay is 37.5 × £15.00 = £562.50. Her regular overtime is 5 × £22.50 = £112.50 a week. Her normal weekly pay, including regular overtime, is £562.50 + £112.50 = £675.00.

Under the legal minimum, her holiday pay works out like this:

Holiday period	Rate per week	Total
First 4 weeks	£675.00 (normal rate, including overtime)	£2,700.00
Remaining 1.6 weeks	£562.50 (basic rate)	£900.00
Full 5.6 weeks at the legal minimum	—	£3,600.00

If Emma’s employer paid all 5.6 weeks at basic rate only, she would get 5.6 × £562.50 = £3,150.00 — £450 less than the legal minimum. That £450 is exactly the overtime element for the first four weeks: 4 × £112.50. It is also worth noting what Emma’s employer is not obliged to do: the remaining 1.6 weeks at basic rate is lawful, unless her contract promises more. If her contract says all holiday is paid at average earnings, the full 5.6 weeks would be 5.6 × £675.00 = £3,780.00.

Emma can check her own figures with our overtime pay calculator, which works out the value of her overtime hours, and then with our holiday pay calculator, which helps with the holiday arithmetic once she knows which hours count.

Worked Example 2: A Variable-Hours Worker and the 52-Week Average

Daniel works on a variable-hours contract in hospitality. His hours change with the season, and his overtime comes and goes. Over the previous 52 paid weeks, his gross pay, including all regular overtime, commission-free, totals £31,200. There were two weeks in that period with no pay at all, because no shifts were offered, so those weeks were skipped and the count was extended back to gather 52 paid weeks.

His average week’s pay is £31,200 ÷ 52 = £600.00. That is the rate for each week’s holiday. Breaking it down: his basic pay over the same period was £27,300, which averages £525.00 a week, and his overtime was £3,900, which averages £75.00 a week. So £525.00 + £75.00 = £600.00.

If Daniel’s holiday had been paid at basic rate only, each week would have been £525.00 — £75.00 a week less. Over his full 5.6 weeks of statutory leave, that difference is 5.6 × £75.00 = £420.00. Because Daniel is an irregular-hours worker, GOV.UK says all of his leave must be paid at the normal rate, not just the first four weeks — the four-week and 1.6-week split applies to regular-hours workers, while irregular-hours and part-year workers get the normal rate throughout. That is an important difference, and it is one reason the 52-week average matters so much for variable-hours staff.

Daniel’s case also shows why records matter: without 52 weeks of payslips, neither he nor his employer can work out the average. If you work variable hours, keep your payslips, or at least a note of each week’s gross pay and hours. Our guide to how to read your payslip shows where to find the gross figure.

What Does Not Count Towards Holiday Pay?

Not everything on a payslip goes into holiday pay. The clearest exclusions are:

• Genuinely occasional overtime. A one-off extra shift, or overtime worked only in an emergency, is not part of normal pay. If you worked overtime in three weeks out of fifty-two, it is hard to argue it is regular.
• Bonus payments, usually. GOV.UK says the normal rate does not usually include bonus payments. A discretionary annual bonus, or a bonus unrelated to the work done in the period, is not normally included. Commission that is directly linked to the work, on the other hand, is included in the normal rate.
• Expenses and allowances that are not pay for work. Travel expenses, or a payment that reimburses a cost rather than rewarding the work, are not part of normal remuneration.
• Pay for a period when you were not working. Weeks with no pay are skipped in the 52-week average, as explained above, rather than counted as zero and dragging the average down.

There is also a trap in the other direction: assuming that because overtime is voluntary, it never counts. As explained above, regular voluntary overtime does count for the first four weeks. The test is regularity, not whether you had to work the hours.

Rolled-up holiday pay — an uplift added to each payslip instead of pay when leave is taken — is a payment method, not a different rate rule. It is only permitted for irregular-hours and part-year workers, for leave years from 1 April 2024, must be shown separately on the payslip, and should still reflect normal pay including regular overtime.

How to Check Your Own Holiday Pay on Your Payslip

Start with your contract, not your payslip. Find the holiday clause — days, bank holidays inside or on top, and whether holiday pay is promised at average earnings or basic rate — then the overtime clause: what is guaranteed, what is voluntary, and at what rate. Our guide on whether UK employers have to pay overtime explains why the contract sets the overtime rate, and our time and a half guide shows how to check a rate line by line.

Next, look at a recent holiday week on your payslip and compare it with a normal working week. If you regularly work overtime, a holiday week in the first four weeks of your leave should be higher than your basic weekly pay. If it is exactly your basic pay, ask why: you may be in the 1.6-week part of your leave, or your contract may allow basic rate throughout — but it may also be an error, so ask payroll to show the calculation.

When you ask, be specific: give the holiday dates, your basic weekly pay, your regular or average overtime, and the rate you were actually paid, and ask for the calculation in writing. Holiday pay errors are usually arithmetic — a wrong reference period, a missed overtime line, or a system set to basic rate for all leave — and a written calculation makes the error visible.

Keep your own weekly note of hours, overtime hours, overtime rate and gross pay, so you can work out a 52-week average yourself and spot a shortfall early; rotas and timesheets get archived, and the longer you leave it, the harder it is to reconstruct. If a shortfall is not resolved, Acas offers free and confidential advice, and you should seek it promptly, because tribunal claims have strict time limits.

Shift workers should note that regular shift allowances and unsocial-hours premiums can also form part of normal pay, on the same regularity test. Our shift pay calculator can price a week of shifts, but which elements count depends on whether they are part of what you normally earn.

The Bottom Line

Does overtime count towards holiday pay in the uk? Yes, when it is regular. Regular overtime — guaranteed, non-guaranteed, or voluntary, if it has become part of your normal earnings — must be included in holiday pay for at least the first four weeks of your statutory leave, and for all of it if you are an irregular-hours or part-year worker. Occasional, one-off overtime does not count, because it is not part of your normal pay. Variable pay is averaged over the previous 52 paid weeks, skipping weeks with no pay, so that a single busy or quiet week does not set the rate.

If you regularly work overtime, your holiday pay should be higher than your basic rate for those first four weeks. Check a recent holiday payslip against your normal weekly earnings, including overtime, and if they do not match, ask payroll for the calculation in writing. Over a full year’s leave, the difference is often several hundred pounds — money earned in hours you already worked.

Sources

• GOV.UK — Holiday entitlement: Holiday pay: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/holiday-pay
• GOV.UK — Holiday entitlement: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights
• GOV.UK — Holiday pay: calculate your average weekly pay if it varied: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/holiday-pay-calculate-your-average-weekly-pay-if-it-varied/holiday-pay-calculate-your-average-weekly-pay-if-it-varied
• GOV.UK — Overtime: your rights: https://www.gov.uk/overtime-your-rights/print