Do bank holidays count as business days?

Published 2026-04-26 · Updated 2026-04-26

Quick answer

Bank holidays usually do not count as business days where the organisation is closed or the policy says public holidays are excluded. Always check the wording for the specific deadline.

Key takeaways

Bank holidays commonly extend working-day deadlines.
Different UK nations can have different bank holidays.
Ireland and the US have separate public holiday calendars.

Diagram showing a bank holiday excluded from a business day calculation — Bank holidays usually pause the count: a quick visual summary for this guide.

Usually, no

Bank holidays and public holidays usually do not count as business days where the organisation is closed. This is especially common for banks, public services, delivery estimates, and formal response deadlines.

But check the wording

Some companies use business days to mean weekdays only, while others explicitly exclude public holidays. If a policy says 'working days excluding public holidays', then bank holidays should not be counted.

Example

If a five-business-day deadline includes a Monday bank holiday, the deadline is usually pushed out by one extra day.

This is one of the main reasons manual counting can go wrong around Christmas, Easter, and national holidays.

Useful official resources

These sources are directly relevant to the date, public holiday, delivery, SLA, or complaint-handling topic covered in this article.