Harpur Trust v Brazel 2026/27: Part-Year Worker Holiday Pay After the Supreme Court Ruling

The case: what Harpur Trust v Brazel was about

Lesley Brazel worked as a visiting music teacher for the Harpur Trust, employed on a permanent, term-time-only contract. She worked roughly 32 to 35 weeks a year, spread across the school terms, but remained an employee of the Trust throughout the full 52 weeks, including school holidays when she wasn't required to work.

The Trust calculated her holiday pay using the 12.07% method — treating her leave entitlement as 12.07% of the hours she actually worked, on the reasoning that this matched the proportion of a full year's leave relative to a full year's working weeks. Brazel argued this wasn't the correct method under the Working Time Regulations 1998, and that she was entitled to the full 5.6 weeks of statutory leave, calculated using the calendar-week averaging method that applied to workers generally.

In July 2022, the UK Supreme Court agreed with Brazel, upholding the Court of Appeal's earlier decision. The Court held that the Working Time Regulations did not require, or even permit, pro-rating a part-year worker's statutory leave to reflect the proportion of the year they actually worked. Instead, part-year workers on permanent contracts are entitled to the same full 5.6 weeks of statutory leave as full-year workers, with pay calculated by averaging earnings over the 52 weeks (excluding unpaid weeks) before the leave is taken.

Worked example 1: the calendar-week method for a term-time worker

Consider Grace, a term-time-only teaching assistant on a permanent contract, working around 39 weeks a year, paid £420 in each week she works.

Because unpaid weeks are excluded entirely from the averaging calculation, Grace's average weekly pay for holiday purposes is simply her normal working-week pay of £420 — not a figure diluted by the weeks she wasn't paid. This is the mechanism that produces a comparatively generous outcome for part-year workers under the calendar-week method.

Worked example 2: what the 12.07% method would have given instead

Now compare what Grace would have received under a 12.07% pro-rated approach — the method the Harpur Trust case ruled unlawful for her circumstances at the time.

For Grace, the calendar-week method produces roughly £375 more per year than the 12.07% pro-rating would have — a gap that widens further for workers who work fewer weeks a year relative to a full-time pattern, since the 5.6 weeks of leave is being spread across a smaller pool of working weeks in the calendar-week calculation while remaining constant. Check your own pattern of weeks worked using

to see where you'd land under each approach.

Worked example 3: an extreme case — very few working weeks

The effect of Harpur Trust becomes more pronounced the fewer weeks a year someone actually works, since the full 5.6-week entitlement stays fixed while the base of working weeks shrinks. Consider Marcus, an exam invigilator on a permanent contract who works just 12 weeks a year, at £380/week.

This is the scenario that most concerned employers after the ruling: for someone working a very small number of weeks a year on a permanent contract, the calendar-week method can produce an effective holiday entitlement far above the intuitive 12.07% benchmark, because the fixed 5.6-week entitlement is being measured against a very small base of actual working weeks.

How the 2024 reforms respond to Harpur Trust

The scale of additional cost and complexity flagged by cases like Marcus's was a significant driver behind the Working Time Regulations reforms that took effect for holiday years starting on or after 1 April 2024. These reforms introduced statutory definitions of "irregular-hours worker" and "part-year worker," and created a specific, lawful 12.07% rolled-up holiday pay route for workers who meet those definitions — giving employers an alternative to the calendar-week method the Supreme Court required in Harpur Trust.

Crucially, the 2024 reforms don't overturn Harpur Trust — they add a parallel, optional route that employers of qualifying irregular-hours and part-year workers can choose instead. An employer can still apply the calendar-week method, and for a permanent part-year worker who doesn't fit the newer statutory "irregular-hours" or "part-year worker" definitions precisely, or whose holiday year began before April 2024, the calendar-week method from Harpur Trust may still be the only lawful approach. Compare the take-home effect of each scenario with

before assuming a change in method won't affect your net pay.

What this means if your pay might be wrong

If you're a part-year worker — particularly in education, exam invigilation, or similar sector-standard term-time roles — and your holiday pay has been calculated using a straight 12.07% of hours worked rather than the calendar-week average, it's worth checking which method should legally apply to you. If your holiday year started before 1 April 2024, or you don't meet the newer statutory definitions of irregular-hours or part-year worker introduced by the 2024 reforms, the calendar-week method from Harpur Trust likely still applies, and an underpayment could potentially be pursued as an unlawful deduction of wages, subject to the standard 2-year backstop on how far arrears can be recovered.

Bottom line

Harpur Trust v Brazel remains the leading authority establishing that part-year workers on permanent contracts get the full 5.6 weeks of statutory leave, calculated on calendar-week average pay rather than a simple 12.07% pro-rating — and for workers with few working weeks a year, that difference can be substantial. The 2024 reforms have since given employers a lawful alternative for genuinely irregular-hours and part-year workers, but haven't erased the underlying ruling. Use

to check which method applies to your working pattern and whether your current holiday pay reflects it correctly.