Prison Officer Annual Leave 2026: Days, Bank Holidays, TOIL

In shortStarting entitlement is 34 days (25 annual leave, 8 public holidays, 1 privilege day), rising to 39 after 10 years' service, per HMPPS's 2023-24 Employee Package.

• Starting34 days25 + 8 public holidays + 1 privilege day
• After long service39 days30 + 8 + 1
• 37h illustration251.6 hours34 days at 7.4 hours a day

HMPPS's Prison Service Employee Package says: 'New employees in the Prison Service are entitled to 25 days' annual holiday (rising to 30 days after 10 years' service), eight public holidays, and one extra privilege day.'

That is the primary source we found, and it covers prison officers and other Prison Service employees in England and Wales.

Because officers work shifts, those days are really hours. If your contract is 37 hours a week, a day is 7.4 hours on a simple five-day division. We explain below why that is an illustration rather than a published rule.

In short34 days is six days above the statutory minimum of 28 from day one, and 39 days is eleven above; other services publish different numbers.

• Statutory minimum28 days5.6 weeks for a five-day week; can include bank holidays
• HMPPS starting+6 days34 days above the statutory minimum
• HMPPS long service+11 days39 days above the statutory minimum
• Scottish Prison Service42 daysAfter five years' service, a year

Statutory holiday entitlement for almost all workers is 5.6 weeks a year, and employers can choose to include bank holidays in that. For part-time or irregular patterns, the 5.6 weeks pro-rata rule applies instead, and employers can offer more than the minimum with different conditions on the extra.

The Scottish Prison Service says its annual leave allowance rises to 42 days a year after five years' service, though the page does not say whether that includes public holidays or how days are counted. See prison officer pay in Scotland and Northern Ireland for pay.

• We did not find a verified leave figure for Northern Ireland's Prison Service.
• We do not have a verified figure for private-sector prison custody officers: advert-level figures we saw were search snippets, not opened pages, so we have not used them.

In shortHMPPS describes leave in days and does not publish how a day converts to hours on a shift roster, so our hours figures are illustrations only.

A civil servant on a Monday-to-Friday 37-hour week has a day of 7.4 hours. A prison officer on a rolling roster may work 12-hour days, 8-hour days, nights or a mix, with rest days that fall at different points in the week.

A 'day' of leave then needs a rule for how many hours are deducted, and HMPPS does not publish that rule in the sources we found.

The employee package describes entitlement in days and operational rotas are local. Ask your local rota or resource management team how leave hours are deducted in your system.

• If a day is treated as 7.4 hours at 37 hours a week, then 25 days is 185 hours and 30 days is 222 hours, with eight public holidays at 59.2 hours.
• If your roster is built from 12-hour shifts, 185 hours would cover about 15 shifts, and 59.2 hours of public holidays would cover about five.
• We chose these numbers to show the scale, not to state how your roster deducts leave.

In shortYou do not lose a public holiday you work: you take the equivalent time on another day, but it is time owed that you must book early.

The Employee Package is direct about public holidays: 'Due to the 24/7 nature of operational roles, employees in these roles are expected to work on some public and bank holidays. If a public or bank holiday falls on a working day, employees will be entitled to take the leave on a different day.'

So you do not lose a public holiday you work; you take the equivalent time at another point.

The entitlement is eight days, which matches the eight bank holidays in England and Wales in a normal year, though we did not find HMPPS listing them by name.

• New Year's Day
• Good Friday
• Easter Monday
• May Day
• Spring and Summer bank holidays
• Christmas Day and Boxing Day

In shortTOIL banks extra hours as time off that does not expire, while Payment Plus pays £23 an hour (about £16.56 after tax and NI); which is better depends on whether you need time or cash.

• Payment Plus£23.00Gross an hour, non-pensionable
• After 20% tax and 8% NIAbout £16.56Basic-rate taxpayer
• Contracted hourly rateAbout £18.10Band 3 pay point 1, £34,928 / 52.143 / 37

The HMPPS employee package says staff who work more than their conditioned hours can 'normally opt between being remunerated with pay (payment plus), where payment plus hours are available, or by being compensated with TOIL (time off in lieu)'.

Banked hours 'do not expire and can be gained or taken at any time in year'. So TOIL works like flexi-time: bank the hour, take the hour.

Payment Plus is only for specified duties outside your shift.

TOIL gives you an hour back worth your normal hourly rate with no tax, NI or pension deducted on that time, so a banked hour is worth a bit more as time than the pay is as cash, while the cash is better if you need it.

See Payment Plus explained and overtime for prison officers.

In shortHMPPS says staff can 'often' carry over and buy or sell leave, but no limits are published, so ask your establishment's HR for the current rules.

HMPPS's recruitment pages say staff can 'often carry over and buy or sell annual leave days if you need to'. The word 'often' matters: we found no published limit on how many days can be carried over, how many can be bought or sold, or how the cost of buying a day is worked out.

Treat those as local and policy-dependent, and ask your establishment's HR team for the current limits and the dates by which a request must be made.

In shortThe HMPPS documents we found do not say how leave interacts with sickness, family leave or leaving, so ask HR in writing before assuming.

Leave does not exist in isolation. See prison officer sick pay and maternity pay for the pay side of those periods.

Sick during booked leave

Whether the days can be reclaimed is a policy question we did not find answered in the HMPPS documents, so ask before assuming.

Maternity or other family leave

Statutory holiday normally keeps building while you are away, but the arrangements for taking it before or after your leave, or carrying it over, are local.

Moving between prisons

Your entitlement should follow you as part of the same employer, but your local leave booking rules, rota and public holiday arrangements will change, so ask the new establishment's resource management team how requests are handled.

Leaving HMPPS part-way through a leave year

Ask in writing how untaken or over-taken leave will be settled in your final pay, because a payslip adjustment either way is common when an employee leaves.

In shortThe commonest mistakes are miscounting the headline 25 days, booking without checking how many hours are deducted, and losing track of TOIL.

• Officers who forget the eight public holidays and the privilege day under-count.
• Officers who think a public holiday is automatically a day off over-count.
• Booking on a rota without checking how many hours the system will deduct.
• Leaving TOIL hours unbanked or unused because they do not expire and then losing track of them.