First pay · 5 min read
What is a zero-hours contract and what are my rights?
How zero-hours contracts work in the UK: your rights to minimum wage, holiday and sick pay, the guaranteed-hours offer in the 2025 Act and when to take one.
The short answer
A zero-hours contract is one where the employer doesn't guarantee any hours and you aren't obliged to accept the shifts offered. You still have worker rights: the minimum wage for every hour, paid holiday that builds up at 12.07% of hours worked, rest breaks, protection from discrimination, and statutory sick pay if you earn enough on average. Employers can't stop you working elsewhere. The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds a right to be offered guaranteed hours reflecting what you actually worked over a reference period, plus reasonable notice of shifts and payment for cancelled ones, with these measures due to take effect in 2027.
Key takeaways
- Zero hours means no guaranteed work and no obligation to accept it. Everything else about worker status still applies.
- You're owed at least £12.71 an hour from April 2026 if you're 21 or over, holiday pay on every hour, and rest breaks.
- Exclusivity clauses have been unenforceable since 2015: you can work for anyone else.
- From 2027, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, regular hours worked must be offered as a guaranteed contract, and short-notice cancellations must be compensated.
On this pageWhat you're owed from the first shift
What you're owed from the first shift
| Right | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum wage | Yes, for every hour worked | £12.71 at 21 and over, £10.85 at 18 to 20, £8.00 under 18 from April 2026 |
| Paid holiday | Yes, 12.07% of hours | Rolled-up or booked; must show on payslip |
| Rest breaks | Yes | 20 minutes after six hours; 11 hours between shifts |
| Sick pay | Yes, with earnings conditions easing in 2026 | Statutory sick pay from day one under the 2025 Act |
| Working elsewhere | Yes | Exclusivity clauses banned since 2015 |
| Guaranteed hours | From 2027 | Offer must reflect hours worked over the reference period |
| Notice and cancellation pay | From 2027 | Reasonable notice of shifts; payment for late cancellation |
| Pension | Yes, if you earn over £10,000 a year | Auto-enrolment applies to workers |
What the 2025 Act changes
The Employment Rights Act 2025 keeps zero-hours contracts legal but changes what they can be used for. After each reference period, expected to be twelve weeks, an employer must offer a worker a contract guaranteeing at least the hours they regularly worked in it. The worker can refuse and stay flexible. Employers must also give reasonable notice of shifts and pay compensation when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice. The government's roadmap puts these measures in 2027, after consultation on the detail. Agency workers are covered too.
When zero hours works for you
- You're a student who needs to drop shifts in exam season and pick them up in holidays.
- You're trying a sector before committing, and the contract lets you walk away without notice.
- You have another job and this one tops it up around it.
- The employer actually behaves as the contract says: you can refuse shifts without consequences.
When it doesn't
When you need predictable income for rent. When the employer expects you to be available all week but only pays for the hours they choose to give you. When refusing a shift means losing the next three. When the same role at a competitor is on a guaranteed 16-hour contract. If you've worked the same twenty hours a week for three months, you're a part-time employee in everything but the paperwork, and from 2027 the law will say so.
Illustrative example: the pattern that became a contract
A graduate takes a zero-hours role on a hotel reception while applying for jobs. For four months she works the same three evenings a week. When a letting agent asks for proof of steady income, she asks the manager for a contract guaranteeing those 18 hours. He agrees, because he'd rather keep her than rota a stranger, and because he knows the law will soon require the offer anyway. Her tenancy application goes through.
Questions people ask
- Do I get holiday pay on a zero-hours contract?
- Yes. Holiday builds up at 12.07% of the hours you work, which is the statutory 5.6 weeks spread across a year. For irregular-hours workers employers can pay it as rolled-up holiday pay, shown as a separate line on your payslip, or you book it and are paid your average rate. Either way it's yours; a contract that says otherwise is wrong.
- Can I be sacked for turning down shifts on a zero-hours contract?
- The contract gives you the right to decline, so in principle no. In practice some employers stop offering shifts to people who refuse, which is the main weakness of the arrangement. The 2025 Act's guaranteed-hours right is designed to end that by converting a regular pattern into contracted hours.
- Can I get sick pay on zero hours?
- Statutory sick pay has needed average earnings of at least the lower earnings limit, currently £125 a week, over the previous eight weeks. The Employment Rights Act 2025 removes that limit and the waiting days from April 2026, so sick pay becomes payable from the first day of illness at a percentage of earnings for low earners.
- Is a zero-hours contract bad for getting a mortgage or renting?
- It makes income harder to prove. Lenders and letting agents usually want three to six months of payslips showing a steady pattern, and some lenders won't count zero-hours income at all. If you've worked regular hours for a while, asking for a guaranteed-hours contract, which the 2025 Act will require employers to offer, fixes this.
Exercises are practice, not evidence of career fit or a qualification. How to read our guides and report a correction.
Sources
- Zero-hours contracts: employer responsibilities · GOV.UK
- Employment Rights Bill: implementation roadmap · Department for Business and Trade, GOV.UK
- National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates · GOV.UK
How this page is written
Sources support the factual background, not a guarantee that an exercise predicts career fit. Fictional practice material is labelled. Dates record content updates; no independent expert review is implied. More about OffLadder.