Annual Leave and Maternity, Paternity and Parental Leave: Does Holiday Still Accrue? UK Rules and the US State Map (2026 Guide)

Short answer for the UK: holiday keeps accruing for the entire maternity leave, all 52 weeks, paid or unpaid, bank holidays included, and the same is true of paternity, adoption, shared parental, unpaid parental and neonatal care leave. Holiday cannot be taken during the leave, only before or after it, and whatever could not be taken because of the leave carries forward in full into the next leave year under regulation 13(14) of the Working Time Regulations. A company shutdown that falls inside the leave costs the employee nothing: the days stay in the balance. In the United States there is no federal rule on accrual: FMLA leave is unpaid, benefits during it follow the employer's written policy, and the state decides whether the leave is paid at all.

England and Wales recorded 585,396 live births in 2025, and the government's own survey found that 83% of working mothers take maternity leave and 59% of fathers take paternity leave. Behind every one of those leaves sits a small-business question that HR software rarely answers well: what happens to the holiday allowance while someone is away for six, nine or twelve months? Does it keep building up? Can the employee add it to the end of the leave? Is it lost if the leave year ends? Does the Christmas closure eat it? This guide answers for the UK first, with the regulation and the official guidance behind each rule, then covers the United States, where the answer is written in the state programme and the company policy, and ends with the practical method for keeping a parent's balance right from the first day of leave to the first day back.

The family leave types, and whether holiday accrues

UK statutory family leave is a family of rights, each with its own length and pay, but with one common feature: the contract of employment continues throughout, and so do the rights that come with it, holiday first of all. Since 6 April 2026 paternity leave and unpaid parental leave are day-one rights under the Employment Rights Act 2025, so the only remaining service condition is the one for statutory pay.

Acas lists them in one sentence: employees still accrue holiday while on statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, ordinary parental, neonatal care, parental bereavement and carer's leave. GOV.UK says the same from the employee's side: they continue to build up holiday entitlement and can take what they have accrued before or after the leave. The contract may add contractual holiday above the 5.6 statutory weeks; for maternity and adoption leave that accrues too, and employer and employee should agree whether it is taken, carried over or, for the contractual part only, paid in lieu.

Does holiday accrue during maternity leave? The regulation 13 answer

The Working Time Regulations give 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday a year, 28 days for a five-day week, and accrual does not depend on being at work: it depends on the contract existing. Acas is explicit that an employee will accrue their holiday entitlement during statutory maternity leave, including bank holidays, and nothing changes in the additional, unpaid half of the year. The numbers are simple. An employee on 28 days who starts maternity leave on 1 March and returns on 1 March the following year accrues the full 28 days of each leave year she is away, plus any bank holidays the contract includes in or on top of the entitlement; nothing is pro-rated for the absence. Employers sometimes assume that the unpaid 13 weeks of additional maternity leave, or unpaid parental leave, stop the clock. They do not: GOV.UK makes no distinction between paid and unpaid weeks, and the Equality Act makes a deliberate deduction a risky one.

What the leave does change is when the holiday can be taken, because two kinds of statutory leave cannot run at the same time. Holiday is taken before the maternity leave starts, which can happen as late as the employee likes unless a pregnancy-related sickness in the four weeks before the due date triggers the leave automatically, or after it ends. Acas warns that taking holiday before the 52 weeks are used up automatically ends the statutory maternity leave, so an employee who wants a paid month at home after nine months of leave should add the holiday to the end of the leave, not take it in the middle. Sickness absence has its own rules, in our guide on calling in sick; what matters here is that a pregnant employee's holiday cannot be refused or shortened because of the pregnancy, which section 18 of the Equality Act 2010 treats as unfavourable treatment throughout the protected period, from the start of the pregnancy to the end of the maternity leave.

Carry-over: all of it, with no 18-month limit

A leave year rarely fits neatly around a maternity leave, so the real question is what survives the year end. Since 1 January 2024 the answer is written in regulation 13(14) of the Working Time Regulations: where, as a result of taking a period of statutory leave in any leave year, a worker is unable to take some or all of the annual leave to which they are entitled, they are entitled to carry forward the untaken leave into the following leave year. Three details matter for payroll. The carry-over covers the whole untaken entitlement, not just the four EU-derived weeks; Acas puts it as "must be allowed to carry it over". There is no 18-month limit: that limit sits in regulation 13(15) and applies to holiday lost to sickness, where carry-over is also capped at four weeks. And the carried days simply join the next year's balance, to be taken under the normal notice rules. An employee who returns in March with 20 untaken days from the previous leave year and a fresh 28 is therefore owed 48, which is exactly why a balance the employee can see, with the carried days shown separately, saves the first conversation back. Our guide on unused holiday covers the general carry-over rules.

Company shutdowns, Christmas closures and the employee on leave

Many small employers close between Christmas and New Year, or for a summer fortnight, and require staff to take holiday for the closure with notice of at least twice its length. An employee on maternity leave during the closure cannot be made to take holiday: holiday and statutory leave cannot overlap, and regulation 13(14) says that whatever she could not take because of the leave is carried forward. The closure days therefore stay in her balance, to be taken on return. The same reasoning applies to a paternity week that happens to coincide with a closure: the employee is on paternity leave, not on holiday, and the holiday days are not consumed. The European Court of Justice reached the same conclusion for the whole of Europe in Merino Gómez (C-342/01) in 2004: a worker must be able to take her annual leave in a period other than her maternity leave, even when it coincides with the dates fixed for the whole workforce by a collective agreement.

Coming back: keeping-in-touch days, part-time returns and the second parent

During maternity or adoption leave the employee can work up to 10 keeping-in-touch days without ending the leave, and up to 20 "SPLIT" days during shared parental leave; these are working days, paid as agreed, and they do not change the holiday accrual either way. A parent who returns part-time keeps the holiday accrued on the full-time pattern up to the return date and accrues pro rata from then on, so the balance has two rates in one year: 28 days accrued until March, then 5.6 weeks of the new three-day week, which is 16.8 days a year, from March onward. The second parent's leave is shorter but the rules are identical: holiday accrues through the one or two paternity weeks, through any shared parental leave and through unpaid parental leave, and none of those weeks can be booked as holiday instead. Where a parent's plans change, the employer's duty is to agree the holiday dates like anyone else's, with the regulation 15 notice rules and no penalty for the leave itself. Parents who resign at the end of a maternity leave are paid for the accrued, untaken holiday in the final pay, as our guide on holiday during a notice period explains.

In the United States: the policy and the state decide

US federal law has no paid parental leave for private-sector employees and no statutory vacation at all: the Department of Labor states that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations. The one federal right is the Family and Medical Leave Act: 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for the birth or placement of a child, at employers with 50 or more employees, for employees with 12 months' service and 1,250 hours. Three regulations govern what happens to PTO during that leave. Under 29 CFR 825.207 FMLA leave is unpaid, but the employee may choose, and the employer may require, accrued paid leave to run concurrently with it. Under 825.209(h), benefits other than health insurance during FMLA leave, holiday pay for example, follow the employer's established policy for other forms of leave. And under 825.215(d)(2), an employee may, but is not entitled to, accrue additional benefits or seniority during unpaid FMLA leave. A written PTO policy that stops accrual during unpaid leave is therefore lawful, provided it is applied the same way to every unpaid leave. Federal employees are the exception: the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act gives them 12 weeks of paid parental leave. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, in force since 27 June 2023 for employers with 15 or more employees, adds leave as a possible reasonable accommodation, and the PUMP Act requires break time and a private space to express milk for a year after the birth.

Paid leave is a state matter, and the map has grown quickly: in March 2026 the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 49% of private-industry workers had access to paid family and medical leave, against 80% with paid vacation (a new combined measure, not comparable with the older "paid family leave" series).

None of these programmes requires PTO to keep accruing while the benefit is paid; that stays with the employer's policy, as under FMLA. What they do restrict is forcing PTO to be used: New York says employers cannot require accrued paid time off to be used during Paid Family Leave unless it runs concurrently with FMLA, and California's EDD says an employee receiving PFL is not on unpaid leave, so the employer may not require vacation or PTO to be used instead. The practical US policy for a small company has three lines: whether PTO accrues during unpaid leave (and the same answer for every unpaid leave), whether the employee may add PTO to the state benefit to top it up, and how the balance is shown to the employee, so that a parent coming back after twelve weeks does not have to ask what is left.

The method for the employer, from the first notification to the first day back

1. Record the leave as leave, not as holiday. Maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental and parental leave are their own absence types, with their own dates and pay; the holiday balance is untouched by them.
2. Agree the holiday around the leave. Days before the start date, days added to the end, or both; put the dates in writing, with the regulation 15 notice on each side, and never refuse them because of the pregnancy.
3. Let the balance accrue for the whole leave, paid and unpaid weeks alike, bank holidays included, contractual holiday included unless the contract says otherwise.
4. Treat closures correctly. A shutdown inside the leave does not consume the employee's holiday; the days stay in the balance.
5. Carry over what could not be taken at the leave-year end, all of it, under regulation 13(14); show it as a separate line so it is not lost in the new year's figure.
6. Plan the cover. Who covers which tasks, and when the colleagues who cover can take their own leave. A shared team wall chart shows a twelve-month absence next to everyone else's holidays at a glance.
7. Keep health data out of the record. The MATB1, fit notes and anything about the pregnancy are special category data under UK GDPR; the absence record needs dates and a type, not reasons.
8. Prepare the return. Pro-rate the accrual from the return date if the hours change, confirm the carried days in writing, and if the employee resigns instead, pay the accrued holiday in lieu in the final pay.

How Bueggio HR handles a parental leave

Bueggio HR is a leave and absence tracker, not a payroll or HR suite: it does not calculate Statutory Maternity Pay, but it keeps the holiday balance and the team calendar right while someone is away for a year.

• A leave type that does not touch the holiday balance. Create "Maternity leave", "Paternity leave" or "Parental leave" as their own types, with their own colour and emoji, set not to deduct the holiday allowance; the person's holiday entitlement stays whole for every month of the leave, because the allowance is an annual entitlement, never pro-rated for absence.
• A year's absence booked in one go. An admin or approver books the leave on the employee's behalf for the whole period; it appears on the wall chart from day one, in the department view and on the colleagues' calendars, so cover is planned around a visible gap.
• Carry-over with a cap and an expiry, plus corrections by hand. The organisation's carry-forward rule (how many days and for how many months) runs automatically at the year end; where the law gives a returning parent more than the company cap, an allowance adjustment with a written reason puts the exact carried days into the new year, and the employee sees them in their balance.
• Closures that skip the people on leave. A date lock marks the shutdown on the wall chart; the admin books the closure holiday for the people at work, and simply not for those on leave.
• Part-time returns. A personal working week for the person who comes back on three days means the holiday engine counts their bookings and their public holidays on the new pattern from the return date, while the rest of the team keeps the company week.
• Nothing sensitive leaves the app. Calendar sync and the Slack status show dates and a generic "out of office", never the leave type; a leave type can require a document, so a MATB1 or certificate stays attached to the request and off the shared calendar; the report and the payroll export carry dates and day counts, not notes.

To choose a tool of this kind, the leave management software guide and the guide on how to track vacation time list the criteria; Bueggio HR costs €1.30 per user per month, with a free month, no card required.

Mistakes to avoid

• Pro-rating the holiday for the leave, or stopping accrual in the unpaid weeks: the entitlement accrues for all 52 weeks.
• Booking holiday inside the maternity leave: the two cannot overlap, and holiday taken early ends the maternity leave.
• Letting the untaken days expire at the leave-year end: regulation 13(14) carries all of them forward, with no 18-month cap.
• Charging a shutdown to the balance of someone who was on leave at the time.
• Refusing or moving a pregnant employee's holiday because of the pregnancy: section 18 of the Equality Act.
• Applying a US "no accrual during leave" clause selectively: 825.209(h) and 825.215(d)(2) tie it to the policy for every other unpaid leave.
• Storing the reason: the absence record needs the type and the dates, not the pregnancy or the fit note.

Frequently asked questions

Does annual leave accrue during maternity leave in the UK?

Yes, for the whole 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave, whether or not the weeks are paid, and including bank holidays. Regulation 13(14) of the Working Time Regulations adds that any holiday the employee could not take because of the leave is carried forward into the next leave year, with no cap and no 18-month limit (the limit applies to sickness only). The same accrual applies to paternity, adoption, shared parental, unpaid parental and neonatal care leave.

Can an employee take holiday while on maternity leave?

No. Two kinds of statutory leave cannot run at the same time, so holiday is taken before the maternity leave starts or after it ends, and taking holiday before the 52 weeks are used up automatically ends the maternity leave. Many employees tack accrued holiday onto the end of the leave to extend the paid time at home; the employer agrees the dates as for any holiday, but refusing holiday because of pregnancy or maternity can be discrimination under section 18 of the Equality Act 2010.

What happens to annual leave during FMLA or state paid family leave in the United States?

Federal law leaves it to the employer's written policy. Under 29 CFR 825.215(d)(2) an employee may, but is not entitled to, accrue vacation or other benefits during unpaid FMLA leave, and 825.209(h) ties benefits during FMLA to the policy the employer applies to other forms of leave. State programmes pay a wage-replacement benefit but do not require PTO to keep accruing; New York bars employers from forcing accrued paid time off to be used during Paid Family Leave unless it runs alongside FMLA, and California says the same because PFL is not unpaid leave.

Methodology and sources

UK legislation: Working Time Regulations 1998, regulation 13 (carry-over after statutory leave in paragraph 14, after sickness in paragraph 15) and regulation 2 (definition of statutory leave); Equality Act 2010, section 18. Official guidance: GOV.UK on employee rights when on leave, maternity leave and pay, Maternity Allowance, paternity leave, eligibility and pay, adoption leave, shared parental leave, unpaid parental leave, neonatal care leave and the Employment Rights Act timeline; Acas on holiday and maternity leave, carrying over holiday, holiday during other leave, paternity leave and parental leave; Department for Business and Trade, parental leave and pay review, summary of evidence (take-up figures); ONS, births in England and Wales 2025; Court of Justice of the EU, Merino Gómez, C-342/01. United States: Department of Labor on the FMLA, vacation leave and the PUMP Act; 29 CFR 825.207, 825.209 and 825.215; OPM on federal paid parental leave; EEOC on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act; state programmes: California EDD and its FMLA/CFRA FAQ, New York Paid Family Leave 2026 and PFL and other benefits, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland; BLS Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2026. Rates change every April in the UK and every January in most states, and the worked examples are illustrative: for a decision with legal effect, check the current contract and policy and have payroll validate the figures.