Leave that goes further
Enter your repeating pattern and see which breaks turn a few leave days into the longest time away, with public holidays and days in lieu counted.
Leave, Sick & Family Pay Pack · £9.99 one-time
One payment · no subscriptionPlan your time off and your pay when life gets in the way.
Find the best days to book around your rota, see what a spell off sick would do to your take-home and pension, and compare return-to-work options after a baby, all built on the Grey Book and using your own numbers.
Sick pay, in your numbers
Compare 12, 26, 39, 52 and 78 weeks off side by side: full and half pay, weekly take-home, a budget check against your outgoings and the pension worst case.
Family leave, planned
Compare returning at 26, 39 or 52 weeks or part-time, see the three-month return commitment at stake, and add partner and shared parental leave.
About you
Role and service
Grey Book scales by role group. Control equivalents match their operational counterparts.
yrs
Five years at the start of the leave year switches on the 3 long-service days.yrs
If you moved from on-call to wholetime, retained service counts at 3 years = 1 year (6 = 2).This leave year (1 Jan to 31 Dec)
Leave the months as January and December for a full year. Starters and leavers get a proportion of the year.
The Grey Book does not say how fractions are rounded, so your service decides. Ask HR.
Duty system and rota
Four 12-hour shifts in an eight-day cycle averages the national 42 hours a week.
Any date that is day 1 of your cycle. Change it to match where your watch is on the rota.
h
Your shift length. The Grey Book states leave in days; this only converts days to hours.Annual leave this year (days)30 days30 exact
Full-year entitlement30days, before your adjustments
Public holidays8separate from annual leave
In hours360 h8.6 weeks of a 42-hour week
In shifts30if one leave day = one 12 h shift
Notes on your figure: no long-service leave yet (five years' continuous service needed at 1 January). The Grey Book makes entitlement proportionate to service in the year, so leave is shown as the unrounded proportion unless you choose a rounding rule.
How your entitlement is built
FirefighterScale A25 d
Scale B5 d
| Part | Full year | Your year | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale A | 25 | 25 | Base leave. Off-duty days that fall inside a block of leave count against it. |
| Scale B | 5 | 5 | Extra leave on any duty day, including successive days. |
| Long service | 0 | 0 | Once five years' continuous service; taken like Scale B. |
| Total | 30 | 30 |
Public holidays in 2027
England, Wales and Northern Ireland list| Holiday | Date | On your rota |
|---|---|---|
| New Year’s Day | Fri, 1 Jan 2027 | Duty day: worked hours paid double time (not pensionable) plus a day in lieu |
| Good Friday | Fri, 26 Mar 2027 | Day off: a day in lieu is granted |
| Easter Monday | Mon, 29 Mar 2027 | Day off: a day in lieu is granted |
| Early May bank holiday | Mon, 3 May 2027 | Duty day: worked hours paid double time (not pensionable) plus a day in lieu |
| Spring bank holiday | Mon, 31 May 2027 | Day off: a day in lieu is granted |
| Late Summer holiday | Mon, 30 Aug 2027 | Duty day: worked hours paid double time (not pensionable) plus a day in lieu |
| Christmas Day | Sat, 25 Dec 2027 | Day off: a day in lieu is granted |
| Boxing Day (26 December) | Sun, 26 Dec 2027 | Day off: a day in lieu is granted |
3 of the 8 dated holidays land on a duty day and 5 on a day off for this pattern. The double-time and day-in-lieu treatment is the Station Manager and below, not-flexible-duty rule in the Grey Book as summarised in our bank holiday guide; how much you are paid for the hours varies by service. Flexible-duty managers get leave in lieu instead. If you are off sick on a public holiday you are deemed to be on holiday leave and get no day in lieu.
Your year at a glance
2027 · Wholetime 2-2-4 (2 days, 2 nights, 4 off)January
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February
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March
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April
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May
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June
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July
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August
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September
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October
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November
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December
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Duty dayDay offPublic holiday
The calendar repeats your cycle from the start date you entered. It shows where duty days and public holidays fall so you can see how many holidays you will work; it does not book leave.
Sources
- NJC Scheme of Conditions of Service (Grey Book, 7th edition, April 2025), Sections 3 and 4: via the LGA
- GOV.UK: UK bank holidays
Scales, long-service test, pro-rata rule, on-call weeks and public-holiday list are from the Grey Book as summarised in our annual leave guide. Rounding, how a week off is counted on your rota, and shift length are your service's local rules or your own inputs. Your contract and leave policy decide.
Annual leave, sick pay and maternity pay calculators stay free: this pack adds the planning layer on top.
What the pack is for
Grey Book leave, sick pay and family leave are generous compared with most employers, but they are also detailed, and the detail is where people lose money or time. Scale A leave absorbs rota days while Scale B does not. Sick pay entitlement is measured back over the previous twelve months. Maternity full pay depends on a year's service, an intention to return and a three-month commitment. The free calculators answer the basic question for each. The pack is for the next question: given my rota, my pay and my plans, what should I actually do?
What is inside
- Leave optimiser. Pick a repeating pattern (2-2-4, day crewing, Monday to Friday or your own), the date your cycle starts and a leave budget. It finds the best non-overlapping breaks for the year, shows days away per leave day against an unplanned average, plots what each extra leave day buys and marks the breaks on a year calendar. Public holidays that fall on a duty day can be credited as days in lieu, following the Grey Book rule that a public holiday during annual leave earns a day in lieu.
- Sick-pay scenarios. Side-by-side results for 12, 26, 39, 52 and 78 weeks off, a cumulative take-home chart over 78 weeks, a household budget check against your monthly outgoings and a pension worst case that shows how much annual CARE pension would be at stake if only the pay you receive built pension.
- Family-leave planner. Return-to-work options at the end of full pay, the end of statutory pay or after 52 weeks, plus a custom return with a part-time percentage, cumulative pay by option, the refund exposure if you do not return for three months, partner leave with Shared Parental Pay at the statutory rate, and a planning checklist.
- Printable briefing, save and CSV. One clean page with your assumptions, leave plan, sick-pay and family-leave numbers and charts, with an optional AI-written interpretation of your figures.
- Ask AI. Questions answered from your own numbers and the Grey Book position, such as when your full pay ends or how a part-time return would change your income.
How the numbers are built
Leave scales, the five-year long-service test, part-year proration and on-call weeks follow the Grey Book as summarised in the annual leave guide. Sick pay follows the six-plus-six and twelve-plus-six month schemes in the sick pay guide, using 26 and 52 weeks. Family leave follows the maternity and paternity leave guide: 26 weeks of full pay then 13 weeks of SMP for those with a year's service who intend to return. Statutory rates are GOV.UK's for 2026/27: Statutory Sick Pay of £123.25 or 80% of earnings, and £194.32 or 90% of earnings for maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay. Take-home uses the site's 2026/27 tax and National Insurance rates and your pension contribution.
Honest limits
This is a planning model, not a payroll or legal statement. Rounding of part days, how your service counts a week off, local enhancements, employer discretion, on-call averaging rules, Maternity Allowance and any Grey Book enhancement of shared parental pay are not modelled. The pension figures are an upper bound, because the scheme may protect pensionable pay during sickness. Statutory family-leave and sick-pay rules are being reformed and rates change each April, so check GOV.UK for changes after April 2026. Leave is always subject to the needs of the service. Where your figures and your payslip or HR's written illustration disagree, they are right.
Frequently asked questions
What does the pack add to the three free calculators?
The free annual leave, sick pay and maternity pay calculators give you the Grey Book answer. The pack adds a leave optimiser that finds the best days to take off around your repeating shift pattern and public holidays, sick-pay scenarios (what if I am off 12, 26, 39, 52 or 78 weeks) with take-home, a budget check and the pension worst case, a family-leave planner comparing return-to-work options, part-time returns and partner leave, a printable briefing with an AI-written summary, saving to your account, CSV export and unlimited AI answers about your numbers.
Is it a subscription?
No. It is a single payment of £9.99. Guest checkout works, and a free account afterwards keeps your access on every device.
Which rules does it use?
The Grey Book (NJC Scheme of Conditions of Service, 7th edition, April 2025) leave scales, sick pay scheme and family-leave provisions as summarised in our guides, plus GOV.UK's 2026/27 statutory rates. Where something is not stated in the Grey Book, such as how your service rounds part days or counts a week off on your rota, it is an input you set, not a rule the tool assumes.
Does the leave optimiser know how my service counts leave?
No, and it does not pretend to. It offers both counting methods: each duty day off costs one day, or every calendar day in a block costs one day. The Grey Book says off-duty days inside a period of leave count as Scale A leave while Scale B and long-service days can be taken on any duty day, so try both and check your service's leave policy. Leave is always subject to the needs of the service.
Will it still be right after April 2026 rule changes?
The Grey Book terms and GOV.UK rates it uses were checked for 2026/27. Statutory family-leave and sick-pay rules are being reformed and rates change every April, so the pack tells you to check GOV.UK before relying on any statutory figure. Nothing here replaces written confirmation from HR or payroll.
Are my figures uploaded?
Calculations run in your browser and your inputs are kept in this browser's local storage. If you save a report it goes to your account, and AI questions or the AI-written briefing send the figures on screen to the AI service. Analytics only ever see coarse buckets, never exact figures.
Does it cover London Fire Brigade and on-call?
You can choose the LFB pay scale, but leave and family terms are the national Grey Book ones, so check your LFB policies. On-call annual leave (four or five weeks) is included. For sick pay and family leave, on-call staff should enter their average weekly wage as normal weekly pay and treat the results as approximate.