Most people who get underpaid have no idea it's happening.
They're not being robbed by someone twirling a moustache. They're being paid the rate that was correct eighteen months ago, by a payroll system nobody updated, in a company where everyone assumes someone else is checking.
And if you've just been made redundant, this matters twice over. Your statutory redundancy pay is worked out from your gross weekly pay. If that figure was wrong, your redundancy payment is wrong as well — and you may have signed for it without ever knowing.
The rates, as they stand now
From 1 April 2026:
£12.71 an hour if you're 21 or over — the National Living Wage £10.85 if you're 18 to 20 £8.00 if you're 16 or 17, or on the apprentice rate
The apprentice rate only applies if you're under 19, or 19-plus and still in the first year of your apprenticeship. The day you finish that first year, if you're 19 or over, you move to your age rate. A 21-year-old apprentice in year two is owed £12.71, not £8.00. That one catches thousands of people and almost nobody notices.
Same with birthdays. Turning 21 should trigger a pay rise the very next pay period. Payroll systems miss it constantly.
Hours you worked that nobody paid you for
This is where most underpayment actually hides. It's not the rate — it's the hours.
The twenty minutes before your shift when you open up, set the till, do the handover. Mandatory training, whether or not it's on site. Security checks at the end of a shift. Travel between assignments during the working day — not your commute in, but the journeys between jobs once you've started. Time spent on call at the workplace.
All of it is working time. All of it has to be paid.
Take your actual hours — the real ones, including the unpaid edges — and divide your gross pay by them. If the answer starts with 11-something and you're over 21, you have a problem.
What doesn't count towards the minimum
Tips don't. Not from customers, not from a tronc, not service charge. Your employer cannot use tips to top you up to the legal minimum — and separately, since the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act came into force, tips have to be passed on to staff in full anyway.
Discretionary bonuses don't count either.
And deductions can push you under. Money taken for a uniform you were required to buy, tools, till shortages, breakages — if that deduction drops your effective hourly rate below the minimum, it's unlawful, even if you agreed to it in writing. You cannot consent your way below the minimum wage. Salary sacrifice can't take you below it either.
There's one exception worth knowing: if your employer provides accommodation, they can count up to £11.10 a day towards your wage. Anything above that offset comes off your hourly rate.
Audit your own payslip in five steps
Write down every hour you actually worked in one pay period, including the unpaid bits. Take your gross pay for that period, before tax. Subtract any deductions for uniform, tools, shortages or equipment. Divide that figure by your real hours. Compare it to the rate for your age.
Do it for three or four months if you can. A pattern is far more persuasive than a single bad week, and it tells you whether this is a one-off error or something systemic.
Reporting it
You can report underpayment to HMRC online at gov.uk/minimum-wage-complaint. It's confidential, it takes around five minutes, you don't have to tell your employer first, and — this is the part that matters for you — you can still do it after your employment has ended. Being made redundant doesn't close the door.
Since 7 April 2026 enforcement sits with the new Fair Work Agency, with HMRC officers acting on its behalf. They can look back six years.
Two details worth knowing before you decide whether it's worth the bother. First, arrears are repaid at today's rate, not the rate that applied when you were underpaid — so an old shortfall is worth more now than it was then. Second, the employer faces a penalty of up to 200% of the underpayment on top, capped at £20,000 per worker, and may be publicly named. In March 2026 the government named 389 employers who between them owed £7.3 million to around 60,000 workers.
You don't attend anything. HMRC handles it.
The redundancy connection
Once you've got a corrected figure for your weekly pay, go back and check your redundancy calculation against it. If your gross weekly pay was understated, so was your statutory redundancy payment.
If you're already past that point, get advice quickly — the tribunal clock is three months minus one day. Acas is free on 0300 123 1100.
Free wage audit checklist and calculator: myredundancyrights.co.uk/calculator