What the Grey Book says about firefighter annual leave
Annual leave for most firefighters is set nationally in Section 3, Part C of the NJC Scheme of Conditions of Service, known as the Grey Book. The 7th edition, published in April 2025, sets out a leave year running from 1 January to 31 December, with the timing of all leave “subject to the exigencies of the service”. In plain English, you have a contractual entitlement to the days, but your service can refuse a particular date if it would leave a station short of crew.
The entitlement is built from three pieces. Scale A is the base entitlement. Scale B is extra leave you can take on any duty day. Long-service leave is a further block that switches on once you have five years’ continuous service. The table below shows the full-time entitlement by role. Part-time staff get the same entitlement pro rata, and Firefighter (Control), Crew Manager (Control) and the other control-room equivalents are grouped with their operational counterparts.
This is the national floor for Grey Book staff in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Individual services can and do add local policies about how leave is booked, and some employers offer more generous terms than the national minimum. Your contract and your service’s leave policy are the final word, so use the figures here to check that what you have been given matches the national terms.
| Role | Scale A | Scale B | Long service | Maximum total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firefighter, Crew Manager, Watch Manager (and Control equivalents) | 25 | 5 | 3 | 33 |
| Station Manager, Group Manager (and Control equivalents) | 28 | 5 | 3 | 36 |
| Area Manager | 35 | 2 | 3 | 40 |
Long-service leave applies once you have at least five years’ continuous service at the start of the leave year. Public holidays are dealt with separately, not inside these totals.
Scale A, Scale B and long-service leave: what each one means
The Grey Book draws a distinction that catches many new starters out. Off-duty days that fall inside a period of annual leave count as Scale A leave. On a shift system your rota already gives you regular days off, so a week away from the station covers your working shifts and the rota days in between. Scale A is the leave that gets used up when you book a block of days that spans your rota days.
Scale B leave, by contrast, may be taken at your request on any duty day, including successive days, again subject to the needs of the service. Because it applies to duty days only, it is the leave you use to extend a break or to take single shifts off. Long-service leave works the same way as Scale B: it can be requested on any duty day, including successive days, once you qualify.
For long-service leave, the qualifying test is five years’ continuous full-time or part-time service under the Grey Book at the start of the leave year. Previous service on the retained duty system before you became wholetime counts, but on a discounted basis: three years of retained service count as one year and six years count as two. If you moved from on-call to wholetime, ask HR to confirm exactly when you cross the five-year line rather than assuming.
Free toolFree firefighter shift calendarLay out your duty pattern and see how leave, rota days and public holidays line up across the year.Open the shift calendar →Worked examples: how many days will you actually get?
The easiest way to check your entitlement is to work through your own case. Take the national terms, add up the scales that apply to your role and your length of service, then adjust if you started, finished or changed contract part-way through the year. The examples below use the Grey Book figures. Treat them as a sanity check and confirm the precise number with your HR or payroll team, especially where rounding is involved.
Rounding and pro-rata calculations are one area where services differ. The Grey Book says the leave entitlement of someone who joins or leaves during the leave year, or who reaches five years’ continuous service during it, is proportionate to their service in that year. It does not prescribe whether fractions of a day are rounded up, down or taken to the nearest half day, so the examples show the unrounded figure.
| Situation | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Firefighter, 2 years’ service, full year | 25 Scale A + 5 Scale B | 30 days |
| Crew Manager, 6 years’ service at 1 January | 25 + 5 + 3 long service | 33 days |
| Station Manager, 8 years’ service | 28 + 5 + 3 | 36 days |
| Area Manager, 10 years’ service | 35 + 2 + 3 | 40 days |
| New Firefighter joining 1 April (9 of 12 months) | 30 × 9/12 | 22.5 days before any rounding |
| Part-time Watch Manager on 60% of full-time hours, 7 years’ service | 33 × 60% | 19.8 days pro rata |
| On-call firefighter, 3 years’ on-call service | Four weeks (each week is seven consecutive days) | 28 days |
| On-call firefighter, 6 years’ on-call service | Five weeks | 35 days |
Illustrations of the Grey Book method only. Your service decides how part-days and part-years are rounded.
How leave is booked, carried over and paid out
Booking rules are mostly local. Services usually run an annual leave bidding or booking system tied to watch cover, with a minimum number of firefighters that must remain on each watch. The Grey Book only says the timing of leave is subject to the exigencies of the service, so a request for a specific date can be declined, but you keep the underlying entitlement.
Untaken leave does not normally roll over. The Grey Book says leave not taken in the leave year is forfeited, except that at the employer’s discretion you may take all or part of the outstanding leave by 31 March of the following year. There is one important exception. If you were prevented from taking your statutory annual leave under the Working Time Regulations because you were off sick or on statutory leave such as maternity leave, the period for taking it can be extended.
You can also take leave in advance. The Grey Book allows you to anticipate leave on the understanding that if you leave voluntarily before the end of the leave year, any leave taken beyond your proportionate entitlement may be treated as unpaid leave and your pay adjusted. Going the other way, if your employment ends, payment in lieu is due for any leave accrued but not taken in the current leave year, and for any days in lieu of public holidays accrued in the previous twelve months. If you die in service, those payments go to your estate.
- Leave year: 1 January to 31 December
- Carry-over: only at the employer’s discretion, normally to 31 March, with a longer period possible for statutory leave missed through sickness or maternity leave
- Joining or leaving mid-year: entitlement is proportionate to your service that year
- Leaving the service: accrued but untaken leave is paid in lieu
Public holidays are separate from your annual leave
Public holidays sit in their own section of the Grey Book and are treated differently from annual leave. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland you are entitled, subject to the needs of the service, to a day’s leave on Good Friday, Easter Monday, the Spring Bank Holiday, the first Monday in May, the Late Summer Holiday, Christmas Day, 26 December and New Year’s Day. In Scotland the named days are New Year’s Day, the first Monday in May, the local autumn holiday and Christmas Day, plus four other days set by the employer in consultation with the unions.
For shift and on-call staff, Christmas Day, 26 December and New Year’s Day count as public holidays on whichever day of the week they fall, regardless of any substitute days the government announces. Staff on a rota with no weekend working use the government’s substitute days instead. A public holiday, for these purposes, is the 24 hours from midnight to midnight.
What you receive depends on whether you work. If you are a Station Manager or below, not on the flexible duty system, and you are required to work on a public holiday, you are paid at double time for those hours (not pensionable) and granted a day’s leave in lieu. If your off-duty day falls on a public holiday, or you are on annual leave or ordinary maternity leave, you are granted a day’s leave in lieu. Leave in lieu should be taken within twelve months. For the detail of how the payment is treated on payslips, see our guide to firefighter bank holiday pay.
On-call (retained) firefighter annual leave
The on-call leave rules are different because on-call firefighters usually have another employer. The Grey Book sets an entitlement of four weeks a year, or five weeks if you had at least five years’ continuous service on the retained duty system at the start of the leave year. A week means a period of seven consecutive days free from duty, and whether leave can be taken in part-weeks or single days is a matter for local agreement between the service and the recognised unions.
Two protections matter in practice. First, while the timing of leave is still subject to the needs of the service, a request to take leave at the same time as your main employer requires you to take leave should not unreasonably be refused. Second, periods of annual leave are disregarded when assessing whether you have met your contractual availability obligations, so booking your week away should not count against your cover commitment.
A week of on-call leave is paid at your average weekly wage, worked out over the previous 52 weeks (or the complete weeks you have been employed if fewer) excluding weeks on sick leave or without pay, and disregarding the annual retainer. If you have a day-crewing wholetime contract with on-call duties added, or you are considering the on-call route, the guides to on-call firefighter pay and on-call availability explain how the retainer and call-out payments fit around your leave.
How leave interacts with sickness, maternity and other absence
Absence does not erase leave, and the Grey Book is specific about how the pieces fit together. Maternity leave counts as service for the purpose of calculating annual leave entitlement, so a year that includes maternity leave still builds up leave. Maternity leave is also not treated as sick leave. If you are on ordinary or additional maternity leave on a public holiday, you are granted a day’s leave in lieu of that holiday.
If you fall sick while on annual leave, or you are off sick when your leave falls due, you are regarded as being on sick leave provided a healthcare professional’s statement or fit note covers it. You may then be permitted to take all or part of the outstanding leave later, normally before the end of the leave year or, in exceptional circumstances and at the employer’s discretion, by 31 March of the following year. Our guide to firefighter sick pay covers the sick-pay side of this.
Other paid leave sits outside the annual leave scales. The Grey Book says paid leave should be granted for jury service and, in appropriate cases, for other public duties, and that employers should put in place reasonable arrangements for paid leave when you return from a residential training course. Special leave, with or without pay, may be granted for compassionate or other special circumstances at the employer’s discretion. See maternity, paternity and family leave for the parental leave rules.
Step-by-step: how to check your own leave entitlement
If you suspect your leave allocation is short, or you have moved role or service, a five-minute audit will usually settle it. You need your contract or terms and conditions, your latest leave record and your service’s leave policy. Most disputes come from one of three sources: the long-service start date, the proportion applied after a mid-year change, or a misunderstanding of how rota days are counted.
- Find your role and duty system on your contract and check whether you are covered by the Grey Book scales for Firefighter, Watch Manager, Station Manager or Group and Area Manager.
- Work out your continuous service date. If you moved from on-call to wholetime, apply the three-for-one and six-for-two discount to your retained service.
- Add Scale A, Scale B and, if you are at least five years in at the start of the leave year, long-service leave to get your full-year total.
- Apply any proportion for joining, leaving, part-time hours or reaching five years mid-year, and ask HR how fractions are rounded.
- Compare your total with the balance shown in the leave system, and ask for a written breakdown if it differs.
- Record the public holidays you worked or were off, and check that the days in lieu appear within twelve months.
Common mistakes and what varies locally
The most common error is assuming that all 30 or 33 days are the same. Scale A absorbs rota days and Scale B and long-service days are duty-day leave, so two firefighters with the same headline number can end up with a different amount of time away from the station depending on how they book. If you are comparing offers from different services, ask how leave is counted on their duty system rather than comparing totals alone. Our guide to transferring between fire services has a checklist for this.
The second common mistake is forgetting the forfeit rule. Because untaken leave is normally lost at the end of the leave year unless the employer exercises its discretion, leaving your bookings until the last quarter can leave you with days you cannot use. Watches often have cover limits that fill up early, so book in good time and get any carry-over agreed in writing.
Finally, remember that pay and leave are linked. Leave is paid at your normal pay, and for on-call staff at your average weekly wage. If you have any overtime, allowances or acting-up pay in the mix, check your payslip to see how leave weeks were paid. For the salary figures behind these calculations, our pay scales show the July 2026 national rates, where a competent firefighter’s basic annual pay is £40,358 and the hourly rate is £18.43.
Frequently asked questions
How many days annual leave does a firefighter get?
Under the Grey Book, a full-time Firefighter, Crew Manager or Watch Manager gets 25 days of Scale A leave and 5 days of Scale B leave, plus 3 long-service days once they have five years’ continuous service, so up to 33 days. Station and Group Managers get up to 36, and Area Managers up to 40. Public holidays are dealt with separately.
How much annual leave do on-call firefighters get?
On-call (retained) firefighters are entitled to four weeks a year, or five weeks if they had at least five years’ continuous on-call service at the start of the leave year. A week is seven consecutive days free from duty. Requests to take leave when your main employer needs you to should not unreasonably be refused.
Do firefighters get bank holidays off?
Firefighters are entitled to leave on the named public holidays subject to the needs of the service, but because stations run 24 hours a day, many work them. If you work a public holiday you are paid double time for those hours (not pensionable) and get a day’s leave in lieu. If it is your off-duty day you still get a day in lieu.
Can firefighters carry annual leave over to next year?
Not as of right. Under the Grey Book leave not taken in the leave year is forfeited, although the employer has discretion to let you take all or part of it by 31 March of the following year. The period can be extended if you were prevented from taking your statutory leave because of sickness or statutory leave such as maternity leave.
What is the difference between Scale A and Scale B leave?
Scale A is your base entitlement, and off-duty days that fall within a period of leave count against it. Scale B is extra leave that you can request on any duty day, including successive days. Long-service leave, once you have five years’ service, works like Scale B. All three are subject to the needs of the service.
Are firefighters paid for annual leave they have not used when they leave?
Yes. The Grey Book says payment in lieu is made for leave accrued but not taken in the current leave year when employment ends, as well as for any days in lieu of public holidays accrued in the previous twelve months and not taken. If you die in service, the amount is paid to your estate.
Is a firefighter’s leave entitlement the same in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
The Grey Book scales apply across the UK, but the public holidays differ. Scotland has its own list of named days plus four others set locally, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland share a list of eight. Local implementation and additional employer benefits vary, so check your own contract.