National Minimum Wage

Guidance
Chapter 4: Compliance and Operation of the National Minimum Wage
the existing NMW guidance on Business Link and Directgov. We are aware that DH has
recently been working with the care sector in producing a framework to enable support for
Personal Assistants and their employers (Department of Health, 2011). We welcome this, but
believe that the official NMW guidance can be better geared to the NMW issues experienced
by both employers and workers in the care sector. We see this as one of the areas feeding
into an overarching need to improve guidance, which we cover next.
4.53 The above discussion of sectors and workers particularly affected by the minimum wage has
underlined and illustrated the evidence we mentioned in paragraph 4.13 above in relation to
simplification of the NMW. As we indicated earlier in this chapter, most businesses and
workers that refer to the NMW rules do so via official guidance rather than the actual
legislation or regulations themselves. So any effort to simplify the NMW rules needs to
include the official guidance as well as the statutes. In our view the most important thing that
the Government could do to simplify the minimum wage is provide better and more
complete guidance for businesses and workers.
4.54 The Government is creating a single website to bring together all of its information and a test
site is already in existence. This means that the BIS website, as well as Directgov and
Business Link, will close. We see this as an opportunity to review the current guidance on
the NMW and to address some of the concerns raised with us. A number of stakeholders
made the point that the current guidance is too legalistic and ‘not written from the practical
point of view’. In terms of simplification of the NMW, the need for better and clearer
guidance was the strongest message from our consultations. Therefore, we recommend
that in order to make operating the National Minimum Wage as simple as possible for
all users, the Government puts in place, and maintains, effective, clear and accessible
guidance on all aspects of the minimum wage particularly where there is significant
evidence of ignorance or infringing practice. As a first step, the Government should
undertake a review of all existing guidance. We would welcome our Secretariat’s
participation in such a review.
4.55 The issues such a review should cover, include:
●● Sector-specific guidance and examples to underpin understanding of the rules where there
are known areas of concern, for example payment of travel time and on-call hours in social
care, and issues for the entertainment sector.
●● Payment for time spent preparing for, and finishing, work, for example to put on and to
take off uniforms.
●● Clearer guidance in respect of apprentices, including whether the Apprentice Rate or the
other rates of the NMW apply. The research presented in Chapter 3 showed there was
evidence of an apparent lack of awareness of the Apprentice Rate, and when apprentices
should move from the Apprentice Rate to the higher (NMW) rates.
●● Clearer guidance on payment of the minimum wage when working irregular hours.
This could involve shift systems or seasonal changes.
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