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The Annual Leave Round

Once a year, annual leave for the following year is allocated through a round: everyone states which weeks they want most, the practice discusses any weeks that are oversubscribed, and the agreed weeks are booked for you as approved leave.

This guide explains what you need to do as a participant.

What Happens in a Round

  1. The window opens. You get an email (and a Leave Round item appears in the site navigation, marked "Open").
  2. You select weeks. On the round page you click the weeks you want and rank them — priority 1 is your top choice. You can change your selections as often as you like until the window closes.
  3. The window closes and the practice discusses. Your selections are frozen. An administrator finalises the year on a shared board — moving, cancelling, or adding selections where the group agrees.
  4. The round is locked. You receive one email listing the leave that was booked for you through the round, and any selections that were not allocated.

Anything not allocated is simply not booked — you can still request that leave afterwards through the normal leave booking flow once booking reopens for the year.

Selecting Your Weeks

  1. Click Leave Round in the navigation (it shows the leave year, for example "Leave Round 2027").
  2. You will see the whole leave year as a grid of weeks.

While the window is open:

  • Click a week to select it. The order you select sets your ranking — your first click is priority 1 (your top choice), the second priority 2, and so on. Click a selected week again to remove it.
  • Your ranked selections are listed below the grid with ▲ / ▼ buttons, so you can reorder your priorities at any time.
  • The grid shows how many colleagues have already selected each week, so you can see where demand is high.
  • School holidays for the local districts are shaded on the grid, to help you target or avoid them if you have children.
  • A summary panel shows your progress: how many weeks you have selected out of your cap, and how many of your selections fall in August–December against the late-year limit.

Press Save selections to save. Nothing is booked yet — a selection is your stated wish, not a leave request. You can change and re-save your selections as often as you like until the window closes.

The rules

  • Round Cap. You can hold at most a set number of selections (normally 4 weeks, or fewer if your entitlement is smaller). The cap is shown on the page.
  • Late-Year Limit. At most 3 of your selections can be in August–December, so leave does not pile up at the end of the year.
  • Priorities are advisory. They inform the discussion; they are not a queue that is honoured in order.
  • Selecting is firm intent. If a selection survives the discussion it will be booked as leave.

After the Window Closes

Your selections are shown read-only. If any of them were moved or cancelled during the discussion, a ghost history section on your page lists where those selections originally sat.

You can still view the whole year's demand on the shared board (read-only) via the link on the round page.

When the Round Is Locked

The navigation entry stays but turns grey and shows a "Locked" badge. Your round page becomes an outcome view:

  • Allocated weeks — the leave booked for you through the round.
  • Not allocated — the selections that did not survive the discussion.

You receive one email at lock summarising the same information. Leave booked through the round appears on your leave page like any other approved annual leave.

For anything you still want to book, use the normal leave booking flow — check that booking has reopened for the year first (administrators sometimes hold bookings closed until the round settles).