Although employers may have set payment rates at or above the National Minimum Wage for their workers and employees, some even using the higher Living Wage (the voluntary living wage foundation rate), many appear to also get their workers to do extra time for free or count certain work activity as unpaid.
All work time will be divided into pay for National Minimum Wage (NMW) purposes resulting in a lower average hourly rate which is used to verify if an employer is breaching NMW regulations.
With an additional 491 shamed employers named on 17th October 2025, 103 of those employers had underpaid, broken the law, are potentially criminal’s, due to unpaid working time causing NMW breaches.
The unpaid working time includes:
- Additional work time before and after a workers shift time
- Rounding clock in time to 5, 15, 30 minutes points after actual work time has commenced
- Unpaid work travel time
- Issues with final pay when employment is terminated
- Pay has been delayed or denied failing NMW regulation at deadline times (the payments are too late)
- Paid only for regular time or a day rate but the individual has actually worked longer than the period the payment covers
- An annualised salaried workers has worked more annual hours than those defined in their employment contract
- Mandatory training time has not been paid
- Failure to pay for time worked for those on night shift or other on call cover periods where work actually occurred
- Failure to pay trial shifts
- Unpaid overtime
Types of work and salaried hours work was covered in the Educational Bulletin Round 18, it was published on 9th December 2021.
Unpaid working time was covered in the Educational Bulletin Round 19, it was published on 21st June 2023.
Paying the correct rate of National Minimum Wage
The National Minimum Wage is the minimum hourly rate of pay due to eligible workers. The National Living Wage applies to workers aged 21 and over.
For ease of reference, the term ‘minimum wage’ is used to cover both National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage.
Most workers who are over the compulsory school leaving age, generally over 16 years, and who work or ordinarily work in the UK are entitled to be paid at least the minimum wage.
Pay Reference Periods
Minimum wage legislation requires that workers must be paid at least the minimum wage on average for all the hours worked in each pay reference period.
A pay reference period is the period of time for which someone is paid. It can be monthly, or any regular time period less than that (e.g. weekly or fortnightly), but never longer than a calendar month.
Record Keeping
Employers’ records must be sufficient to show that they are paying each worker at least the minimum wage for every pay reference period worked.
Employers must be clear on what elements count as pay for minimum wage
purposes and they must ensure that any deductions made do not take the worker’s pay below the minimum wage rate.
The records kept by the employers may include records of payments to workers, deductions and payments from workers, records of actual hours worked and proof of payment of wages (please note this list is not exhaustive).
From 1st April 2021, employers are required to keep records for a minimum of 6 years after the end of the pay reference period following the one that the records cover.
This applies to all records created after 1st April 2021 and also to all records which an employer was still required to keep immediately prior to 1st April 2021 under the previous requirement that records be kept for a minimum of 3 years.
More information on record keeping.
PAYadvice.UK 20/10/2026