How to cheat the system and get 50 days off work next year as 2024 Bank Holidays are confirmed

With a bit of forward planning, you can enjoy 50 days off work while only using 27 days annual leave.

Yep - with summer now a distant memory and only 85 days left of 2023 (sorry), thoughts can turn to next year and, more importantly, how to maximise your precious annual leave so you can have almost double the time off.

We see this hack year after year and, as ever, it works quite simply by booking days off around bank holidays, which can turn one day off into two - and by planning your time off like this you’ll give yourself a better shot of being able to book a decent break for when the beautiful British summer inventively turns into a total wash out.

Next year’s bank holidays have been confirmed as:

Monday, January 1: New Year's Day

Friday, March 29: Good Friday

Monday, April 1: Easter Monday

Monday, May 6: Early May bank holiday

Monday, May 27: Spring bank holiday

Monday, August 26: Summer bank holiday

Wednesday, December 25: Christmas Day

Thursday, December 26: Boxing Day

Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio

So, if you want to get a decent break at Easter, you’ll need to book days off around the bank holidays beginning with Monday March 25, Tuesday 26, Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 - you’ll then have Friday 29 and the following Monday 1 April off for Easter. You can push it even further by booking off 2 to the 5 April off meaning your eight days annual leave gives you two whole weeks off.

If you want to have a chunk of time off in May, then your best bet is to book off May 2 to 10, which gives you nine days off in total - or you can use the late May bank holiday and book off from May 28 to 31.

Pexels/Tembela Bohle

To make the most of the summer, you can book August 27 to 30, which will give you a week off thanks to the summer holiday on Monday 26 August.

With your leftover annual leave, you can enjoy a lengthy Christmas break by booking December 23 and 24, December 27, and December 30 and 31. If you can, you could even book off the 2 and 3 January 2025, meaning you’ll end up with 16 whole days off around Christmas.

And with that in mind, my only advice is that you should now make note of the dates below and rush to put them through at work before everyone else does.