Holiday pay records: the six-year duty and a 22 September deadline

Since 6 April 2026 your employer has had to keep records proving your holiday and holiday pay were right — and the consultation deciding who enforces that closes at 11.59pm on 22 September 2026.

What changed on 6 April 2026

Employers must keep records of annual leave and holiday pay, and keep each record for at least six years from the date it was made. The duty comes from the Employment Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025. It applies to all workers, not only those on irregular hours.

The records have to show holiday taken, holiday carried over from previous years, holiday pay, and any payment for unused leave when someone leaves. Failing to keep adequate records is a criminal offence in itself, and the fine is unlimited. Employers can keep them in whatever format they reasonably think fit.

One thing to be clear about: the duty began in April 2026, so no employer holds six years of records yet. The six years is how long records must be kept from now on.

That is a duty to write things down. On its own it gets nobody their money back.

What is being decided now

The Department for Business and Trade opened a consultation on 30 June 2026 on how the Fair Work Agency should enforce statutory holiday pay. The agency was set up on 7 April 2026 and enforces the minimum wage, employment agency rules and gangmaster licensing. It does not enforce holiday pay yet — that is due from 2027, and so is statutory sick pay.

The consultation closes at 11.59pm on 22 September 2026. It is open to workers, employers of any size and trade unions.

What is proposed:

• the agency could investigate holiday pay underpayments going back six years — but only ones that happened after 18 December 2025
• it could recover the arrears on a worker’s behalf, without that worker bringing a claim
• penalties of 200% of the arrears, capped at £20,000 per worker and at least £100, exactly as for the minimum wage
• a 50% discount where the employer puts things right within two weeks, and no penalty at all for employers who repay before an investigation starts
• the government asks whether underpaying employers should be named, as minimum wage offenders are

Date	What happens
6 April 2026	Six-year record duty starts
22 September 2026	Consultation closes
2027	Fair Work Agency expected to enforce holiday pay

The bit people get wrong

A duty to keep records is not a duty on anyone to check them. Until the agency’s holiday pay powers begin, the only way to get underpaid holiday back is still your own employment tribunal claim, brought inside the time limit that applies to you. The six-year look-back is a proposal in a consultation, not a right you hold today.

The government says state enforcement is meant to support lower-paid workers and those in more precarious work — people less likely to take a claim to a tribunal themselves. That is also the group whose holiday is hardest to count: bank and casual staff, term-time-only workers, and anyone whose hours change week to week.

What to do with it

Ask for your own numbers. Check what your entitlement is for this leave year, how much you have taken, and what rate your holiday was paid at. For irregular-hours and part-year workers, holiday pay is based on average pay over the previous 52 weeks, not on basic hours alone — weeks with no pay are skipped and the employer counts back further, up to 104 weeks, to find 52 weeks of usual pay.

Agenda for Change staff have a further trap. Entitlement is published in days for full-timers but has to be held in hours for everybody else, and converting at the wrong week length quietly costs part-timers shifts a year. Our page on NHS annual leave sets out the entitlement and how the hours conversion works.

Where these figures come from

• Make Work Pay: holiday pay compliance and enforcement — GOV.UK
• Consultation on holiday pay compliance launched — Personnel Today
• Failure to keep adequate holiday records will become a criminal offence from April 2026 — Lewis Silkin
• United Kingdom: Fair Work Agency Holiday Pay Enforcement Strategy — Baker McKenzie
• Employment Rights Act 2025 — Acas
• Keeping records — Holiday entitlement — Acas
• Calculating holiday pay — Acas

Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.