How the planner works
Tell us your allowance. We’ll show you when to take annual leave and how much time off it gives you.
1. Enter your allowance
Choose where you work and the year. Include bank holidays in your total: 25 days plus 8 bank holidays means enter 33.
2. Request the yellow dates
Each month shows the annual leave to request. Take all the dates to get the full plan. Weekends and bank holidays turn them into longer breaks.
3. Find a trip
Each break has links to flights, hotels and holidays for those dates. Check your leave is approved before you book a trip.
Reading your plan
The days-off total counts the breaks made by your annual leave, including their weekends and bank holidays. It doesn’t count every weekend in the year.
If a break crosses two months, it appears in both with the same number. It counts once in your totals. Dates from the other month are labelled on the calendar.
A “Weekend idea” is a separate suggestion for a Friday-evening trip. It uses no annual leave and isn’t counted in your plan.
Where the dates come from
Bank holiday dates come from GOV.UK, which publishes them for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland a year or two ahead. We check GOV.UK every week and keep a copy in case it can’t be reached. The last check was on 19 October 2026.
Most bank holidays are set by the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971. The rest, including substitute days and one-off holidays such as coronations, are set by royal proclamation, so dates published far ahead can change.
What it assumes about your job
- You work Monday to Friday. The planner never books a weekend, and it counts weekends as time off.
- You get bank holidays off. Employers don’t have to give them (GOV.UK), but most office jobs do.
- Your allowance includes bank holidays. Enter your whole allowance: 25 days plus 8 bank holidays is 33. The planner takes that year’s bank holidays off and books the rest. Some employers count bank holidays inside the legal minimum of 28 days (Acas), and this way the planner works for both.
- Your leave year runs January to December. NHS leave years start in April, so an NHS plan may cross two leave years.
How it picks the days
A day of leave is worth more next to a weekend or a bank holiday, because it joins them into one longer break. In England and Wales, requesting the Tuesday to Friday after Easter Monday gives you ten days off for four days of annual leave.
The planner looks at every way of spreading your days across the year and chooses the one with the most days off in total, counting only breaks that fit the kind you asked for:
- More time off, mostly long weekends: any break of four days or more. This is mostly long weekends, because a Friday and a Monday next to a weekend uses the fewest days of leave to get days off.
- Longer holidays, at least 9 days each: breaks of nine days or more, for proper holidays. You get fewer days off in total.
Long weekends that don’t touch a bank holiday all give the same number of days off wherever they fall, so the planner spreads them through the year rather than bunching them up. If your allowance can’t all be used in breaks of the kind you chose, the planner tells you how many days are left over.
What it doesn’t cover yet
- Part-time work and other working patterns.
- Leave years that start in April or another month.
- School holidays, and local holidays set by Scottish councils (mygov.scot).
Check any plan against your contract and your employer’s leave rules before you book.