Holiday entitlement dispute

Jibber123

I work part time at a local small business. I originally started 5 years ago when the business was starting up, on casual hours, then after 6 months I was put on, two 9 hour days a week PAYE. I regularly worked 3-4 day per week doing 12 hour plus days for a couple of years averaging well over 2000 hours a year and I got paid cash in hand for the additional hours. Last September I was cut down to just two 9 hour days per week, and told I must not do any overtime, but as I work set days every week, some months have 8 days and some have 9, they would pay me cash for the extra day. Then in August this year I was cut again to just one 9 hour day per week. I have just emailed them to book my holiday which I worked out from the government website as 7 days. As December 29th would be an extra day that month I don't have do take it as holiday as it's not part of my PAYE hours that are used to calculate my holiday entitlement. I will already have worked 4 days in December as per my PAYE. And I've also booked the whole of March off, but will only need to use 4 days holiday as my PAYE hours are 4 days per month, the 5th day is an extra day so i don't need to use holiday as it isn't used to accrue holiday entitlement.
I've been told by my employer I am only entitled to 5.6 days holiday this year (April 2022- March 2023) and i have to work the extra days in December and March or use holiday to take them off. If that is the case according to my interpretation of the holiday entitlement rules on the government website they should be included in my PAYE hours and count towards my holiday entitlement, is that right? Also as I worked 4 months at 2 days per month and 8 months at 4 days per month my holiday entitlement is 7 or 8 days (depending on whether you calculate it using hours or days worked on the government website) not 5.6 is this correct?

Undervalued

The solid block of text and numbers is a bit difficult to digest!

Am I right in deducing that you actually worked 40 days in total during the year?

Also, I assume your holiday entitlement is (pro rata) the statutory minimum which for a full time person would be 5.6 weeks (i.e 28 days) per year? That equates to 12.07% of working hours / days taken as holiday.

If so, then I think your employer's number of 5.6 days is correct.

My sums are

40 days worked + 5.6 days holiday = 45.6 days/

12.07% of 45.6 = 5.5 (with the rounding on my calculator).

But maybe I am missing something?

theoretica

What 12 month period is your holiday allowance calculated over?

Jibber123

Yes I've got a separate part time job, plus I do odd jobs for people in the village and we run a small holding, animals and plants take up the rest of the time. So for this job I worked 4 months at 2 days per week and 8 months at 1 day per week, so for the holiday year 1th April 2022 to 31st March 2023 I will have worked a total of 64 days not 40. Using your calculation I make it 8.4 days holiday?