Hi,
I will start a PhD in one month and I don't know how many weeks off you can get officialy. And if usualy the number of offical weeks off is respected.
Thanks

i recall reading somewhere that you are officially entitled to 6 weeks holiday a year.

No, this is not at all respected.

you don't have to tell anyone. No one counts and checks how many days you take off or anything. in the majority of cases, you structure your own time. As long as you get your work done, it's fine.

I agree with Sim, although it's best advised to not take advantage of the leniancy in the amount of time you take off, especially if you plan on getting your PhD finished.

I tend to take 2/3 weeks holiday away each year, maybe a week or two off for Christams, and then I have odd days where I either do no work at home, go away, or just have "rest days". I always let my supervisor know if I'm planning a long holiday or planning on taking more than a few days off, but otherwise I'm free to come and go as I please and no-one checks up on me. I work from home quite a bit as well.

As long as you get your work done all is fine, but just make sure your supervisor isn't one who checks up on you if you're planning on taking a lot of time off.

Hello! I'm not actually sure, but I started in September and took two full weeks of at Christmas. I have booked a holiday in July (for two weeks) and don't intend to take any more time off. Having said that, I now work part time, so 2-3 days a week I do absolutely nothing PhD related. M,x

My funding council (AHRC) allows full-time PhD students to take up to 8 weeks off a year. But the university might permit a smaller total.

as long as my supervisor doesn't realise I'm away! I don't tend to have block time away though, I tend to just take a day off when I feel like it, although I do work through the weekends and into the evening so, if I were on a flexitime arrangement I would probably deserve 6 months off!

Officially 4 weeks.
But if you can show to your supervisor that you work hard and produce results, you might take as much days off as you want (at least this happens in my school)

When I was doing my PhD there was a kind of official 6 or 8 weeks set by the research council.

It was always the unwritten rule though you could take off as much time as you wanted provided you got everything done - probably not so easy if you're working in a lab subject but I worked from home most of the time anyway so nobody really knew the difference. Didn't do me any harm ;)

It can depend on where your funding is from. I know people in some subjects who work strict 9-5 weekdays and have 5 weeks off per year (plus a few university holiday days). My funding doesn't come with any conditions at all about time off, but I tend to go with the 5-6 week thing- I take 2 weeks at Christmas, a week at Easter, and a couple of weeks in summer. Having said that, unless I am away I tend to work from home during those holidays anyway, which probably isn't a good thing. But like the others have said, as long as my work gets done nobody is regulating my hours or the days that I'm in or anything, so I could be a lot more flexible with my time if I wanted to be. Best, KB

we have the standard statutory 4 weeks plus university holidays like Christmas, when the uni is closed but some supervisors expect people to work then too. With how the funding works we can be a bit micromanaged, expected to be at our desks the whole time. I got my supervisor to get me a dispensation for this because I find my deskspace very distracting and live far from the uni so working at home a much better option. Means I can be flexible about which days I work but still couldn't head off anywhere on holiday.