Yes, workers on a zero hours contract are entitled to paid holiday. They build up 5.6 weeks of statutory leave a year, accruing at 12.07% of the hours they work. The agency that employs them works out zero hours contract holiday pay and pays it correctly.
This guide is written for the agency or supplier that employs casual crew: event staffing firms, caterers, promotional agencies, festival suppliers and venues. The sum is quick for one person. It gets harder across a roster whose hours change every shift, and the rules changed for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024.
Below is:
- The 12.07% method,
- Rolled-up holiday pay,
- The 52-week average,
- Four worked examples and
- Calculator you can run yourself.
One note before we start. This is general guidance, not legal or tax advice. Rules and rates change, so check anything you act on against gov.uk and ACAS.
Do You Get Holiday Pay on a Zero Hours Contract?
Yes. Every worker on a zero hours contract is legally entitled to paid holiday. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, almost all workers get 5.6 weeks of statutory paid holiday a year, including casual, seasonal, and zero-hours workers.
The leave builds up as they work. For irregular-hours and part-year workers, it accrues on the hours completed rather than as a fixed block of days. Statutory holiday is capped at 28 days for someone on a five-day week.
Two definitions decide which rules apply, and they matter for casual crew. An irregular-hours worker is someone whose paid hours are wholly or mostly variable under their contract. A part-year worker is contracted to work only part of the year, with periods of at least a week when they do no work and get no pay. Most event and festival crew on zero-hours terms fall into one group or the other.
Paid holiday is a legal right for every casual worker on the books.
One point often trips agencies up. A worker paid an annual salary in equal instalments across all twelve months is not a part-year worker, even if the work itself is seasonal. The unpaid gaps are what define the category. If in doubt about a particular contract, check the worker’s status against gov.uk before you choose a method.
Working out zero hours contract holiday pay is the employer’s job, and the employer pays it. For agency crew, that employer is the agency. Any firm running software for managing temporary and casual staff still carries that duty for every casual worker it engages. The rules for how to work the pay out are below.
Zero Hours Contract Holiday Pay: The 12.07% Method
The core method for casual crew is the 12.07% accrual method. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, holiday for irregular-hours and part-year workers builds up at 12.07% of the hours they work in each pay period.
The figure comes from the statutory leave itself. A worker gets 5.6 weeks of holiday out of a 46.4-week working year, and 5.6 divided by 46.4 is 12.07%. So every hour worked earns 12.07% of an hour as paid holiday. This is how to calculate holiday pay for most casual event crew.
Every hour a casual worker completes earns 12.07% of an hour as paid holiday.
Here are the steps for one pay period:
- Add up the hours the worker completed in the pay period.
- Multiply the total hours by 12.07% (hours ÷ 100 × 12.07).
- Round to the nearest hour: under 30 minutes rounds down, over 30 minutes rounds up.
- Record the accrued holiday against a central record for every worker, because entitlement builds up per person.
Worked example: accrual. A brand ambassador completes 68 hours in a fortnightly pay period. 68 × 12.07% = 8.21 hours. The fraction is under 30 minutes, so it rounds down. The worker has accrued 8 hours of paid holiday for that period.
One distinction is worth getting straight, because it is where most confusion sits. The 12.07% figure tells you how much holiday a worker earns, measured in hours. It does not, on its own, tell you the rate that holiday is paid at when they take it.
There are two ways to settle the pay side. You either roll the holiday pay up and add 12.07% of their pay to each packet, or you hold the accrued hours and pay them at the worker’s average weekly pay when leave is taken. Both are covered in the sections below. The 12.07% accrual is the shared starting point for each.
The 12.07% holiday pay figure has one firm limit. It is only for irregular-hours and part-year workers. A crew member on a fixed, predictable pattern is not an irregular-hours worker, so their holiday is worked out the standard way and the 52-week method covers their pay. Classify each worker correctly first, because the wrong method applied at volume becomes a systemic underpayment across the whole roster.
Rolled-Up Holiday Pay: What It Is and When It's Allowed
Rolled-up holiday pay means paying a worker’s holiday as they earn it, added to each pay packet, instead of when they take leave.
It is legal again for irregular-hours and part-year workers in leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. The rate is at least 12.07% of the worker’s pay for the period.
Three conditions have to hold for rolled up holiday pay to count:
- Shown separately: it appears as its own clearly labelled line on the payslip.
- Paid on top of the minimum wage: it sits on top of at least the National Minimum Wage, never absorbed into the hourly rate.
- Paid as the work is done: it goes out at the same time as the pay for the shifts in that period.
Rolled-up holiday pay only counts if it is a separate, visible line on the payslip.
Miss that separate line and the risk is real. If holiday pay is buried inside a headline hourly rate, a tribunal can treat it as never paid, and the agency may have to pay it a second time.
Taking 12.07% of the worker’s pay handles the rate question for you. Because you are paying a percentage of everything they actually earned in the period, the holiday pay already reflects any overtime, bonuses or higher-rate shifts in that pay run. For an irregular-hours or part-year worker paid this way, the whole holiday entitlement is treated as paid at their normal rate.
- Worked example: rolled-up pay. A casual crew member is paid the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour and works 35 hours in a weekly pay period. Their pay is £444.85. Rolled-up holiday pay is 12.07% of that, which is £53.69. It is paid on top of the £444.85 and shown as a separate line on the payslip.
- Worked example: mixed rates. In one week a crew member works 20 hours as a steward at £12.71 and 10 hours as a team leader at £15.00. Their pay is £254.20 plus £150.00, which is £404.20. Apply 12.07% to the total, not to each rate: 12.07% of £404.20 is £48.79.
The mixed-rate example is the common event case. A person stewards one shift and leads a team on the next, at two different rates, inside a single pay period. Sum their actual pay for the period, then take 12.07% of the total. Splitting the calculation rate by rate gives the same answer here. Working from the period total is simpler and harder to get wrong at scale.
The 52-Week Averaging Method (When You Don't Roll Up)
When a worker takes leave and the agency does not roll up, holiday pay is based on their average weekly pay. Take the average over the last 52 weeks in which they were paid.
Only count weeks the worker was actually paid. Skip any week with no pay and go back further to reach 52 paid weeks, up to a limit of 104 weeks. A week’s holiday pay is the total of those 52 weeks’ pay divided by 52.
- Worked example: 52-week average. A crew member was paid £13,000 across the 52 weeks in which they worked. £13,000 ÷ 52 = £250. Each week of holiday they take is paid at £250.
What counts as pay in that average matters as much as the sum. Holiday pay has to reflect what a worker normally earns, so the reference weeks include more than basic hourly pay.
Include the following where they are paid regularly:
- Overtime that is worked regularly, whether it is voluntary, compulsory or non-guaranteed.
- Commission that is tied to the tasks the worker is contracted to carry out.
- Payments for status, such as extra for length of service, seniority or a qualification the role requires.
A week’s holiday pay has to reflect a worker’s normal earnings, not just their basic rate.
Genuinely one-off or occasional payments can sit outside the average. A single ad hoc bonus, or overtime worked once in a year, does not have to be counted. The test is whether the payment is a normal, regular part of what the person earns. This is the method for anyone whose leave you pay as time off rather than rolling it up, and it is where accurate historical pay records earn their keep.
Zero Hours Contract Holiday Pay: Methods at a Glance
Three methods cover almost every casual crew situation. Which one applies depends on whether you are tracking earned leave, paying as you go, or paying for leave taken. The 12.07% accrual sits underneath all three, because it is how the entitlement builds up in the first place.
Most event agencies settle on rolled-up pay for genuinely casual crew, because it clears the holiday each period and keeps the payslip honest. The 52-week average comes in for workers who bank their leave and take it as time off. The table sets the three side by side.
| Method | How it works | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| 12.07% accrual (hours) | Holiday builds up at 12.07% of the hours a worker completes in each pay period. | Tracking how much leave an irregular-hours or casual worker has earned. |
| Rolled-up holiday pay | At least 12.07% of the worker's pay is added to each pay packet as a separate, labelled line. | Paying holiday as you go for irregular-hours and part-year workers (leave years from 1 April 2024). |
| 52-week average | A week's holiday pay is the average weekly pay across the last 52 weeks in which the worker was paid. | Working out what to pay when a worker takes leave and you do not roll up. |
The three ways to handle holiday for irregular-hours and casual crew. Verify current figures against gov.uk before you rely on them.
Try the Holiday Pay Calculator
A holiday pay calculator turns the everyday version into a few seconds of work. Enter the hours a worker completed to see the holiday they have accrued, or enter their pay to see the rolled-up amount. A third mode averages pay across the reference weeks for leave taken as time off.
It is built for the person at the agency who has to get this right every pay run. Use it to sanity-check a zero hours contract holiday pay figure before a payroll run, to settle a query from a crew member, or to show a client how their staffing costs break down.
It uses the gov.uk rules for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. Treat the result as a guide and check anything you act on. For a whole roster, though, the sum is never the hard part. Capturing the right hours for each person is.
Zero hours holiday pay calculator
Work out paid holiday for casual and zero-hours crew three ways: the leave they have earned, rolled-up pay to add each period, or a week's pay for leave taken. For irregular-hours and part-year workers.
How much paid holiday a worker earns from the hours they complete in a pay period.
Add a rate to see the indicative cash value of the leave earned.
Holiday pay to add to each pay packet, paid as the worker earns it.
The worker's total pay for the shifts in this pay run, before the holiday pay is added.
Not sure of the total? Work it out from hours and rate
Enter hours and rate to fill the gross pay above.
A week's holiday pay when leave is taken as time off and not rolled up.
Add up the pay from the reference weeks. Count only weeks the worker was actually paid.
Skip any unpaid week and look back up to 104 weeks to reach 52 paid ones. Use fewer than 52 only for a newer worker with less history.
Accrued holiday
From the hours worked in the period
8hours
Paid holiday earned
Statutory rounding: under 30 minutes rounds down, 30 minutes or more rounds up. This is the leave earned this fortnight, tracked per worker.
Liveforce is the workforce management platform event agencies use to capture the accurate hours behind every holiday calculation.
Getting It Right at Scale: Why Accurate Hours Matter
For one worker, the 12.07% sum takes a minute. For a roster of casual crew across events, the hard part is knowing exactly how many hours each person worked. A missed or estimated timesheet turns into an underpayment or an overpayment, and across hundreds of shifts that is real money and real compliance tracking risk.
Holiday pay is only ever as accurate as the hours behind it.
The records matter as much as the pay run. If a worker questions their holiday, or a claim reaches a tribunal, the agency needs to show the hours each person worked and the holiday that was paid on them. Reconstructing that from memory or a stack of paper timesheets months later is where agencies come unstuck.
Clean, contemporaneous hours data is the difference between a query settled in minutes and a dispute you cannot evidence.
Liveforce is the workforce management platform that event-led agencies use to capture those hours cleanly. It records what each person actually worked and holds their details in one place, so the numbers that feed the agency’s holiday pay and payroll are right. It replaces the guesswork of paper timesheets, spreadsheets and end-of-month reconstructions.
Three things do the heavy lifting:
- Timesheets tied to shifts: hours worked are recorded against the scheduled shift, per person and per rate, through timesheets that capture accurate hours worked.
- One record per worker: each person’s shifts, roles and details sit together, so accrued holiday is tracked against the right individual.
- Clean exports: the hours data feeds the agency’s payroll and holiday pay process without rekeying.
The line to hold is simple. The agency calculates and pays the holiday. Liveforce supplies the accurate hours it needs to do that. It is built for event staffing, catering, hospitality and promotional agencies, festival suppliers and venues that run large casual or freelance teams, and crew confirm their worked hours in the app so the record starts accurate.
Get the classification right, pick a method, and keep the records straight. Keep the hours right, and the holiday pay follows. This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, so confirm the current rules and rates with gov.uk and ACAS (helpline 0300 123 1100) before you act. To keep the hours behind every calculation accurate, event agencies run their workforce on Liveforce.
