Methodology

A minimum-wage site is only useful while its numbers are the rate of record. The four band rates change every April; the accommodation offset moves with them; the Low Pay Commission tables historic rates back to 1999 with the odd late correction. A static audit would go stale within weeks. This site instead treats every figure as a live fetch against a primary GOV.UK URL, listed on /sources, and re-pulls them on a fixed cadence.

NMW rates change at 00:00 on 1 April. The previous rate is the rate of record for any pay-reference period ending on or before 31 March; the new rate applies from the first pay-reference period beginning on or after 1 April. The site holds both values in src/data/rates.ts for the eight-week window either side of the flip so back-pay calculations land on the correct band. The VerifiedStamp goes coral the moment a new rate is announced (usually late October) until the new values are merged.

• Weekly: re-fetch gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates and gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-accommodation. Drift triggers an immediate update.
• Monthly: sweep Low Pay Commission publications for new remits and draft recommendations.
• On uprate: full re-verification within 24 hours of any new rate announcement.
• On Royal Assent: re-check any Employment Rights Bill clause that touches NMW enforcement (age-band consolidation, accommodation-offset cap, penalty multiplier).

The Low Pay Commission publishes a draft recommendation each autumn; the government of the day either accepts it, amends it, or (rarely) overrides it. The site tracks both figures separately on /history: the LPC recommendation and the accepted rate that became law. The amber DeltaBadge marks any year where the two diverged; the coral badge marks any year the accepted rate fell short of the LPC ask in cash terms. This matters because the underlying mandate (Low Pay Commission Act 1998) made the LPC advisory, not binding.

The strip at the top of every page is colour-coded by age:

• Lime: verified within the last 7 days.
• Amber: 8-30 days since last verification.
• Coral: more than 30 days since last verification, or an unaccepted LPC recommendation outstanding.

NMW underpayment rarely looks like a deliberate underpayment. The cases that show up in HMRC's naming rounds and that the site is written to help you avoid are these:

• A band-change that misses a birthday. An 18-year-old hits the 18-20 rate the moment they turn 18, applied from the first full pay-reference period after the birthday. A worker who turns 21 moves to the National Living Wage on the same rule. Payroll systems that uplift on the next payroll run, not the next pay-reference period, fail this.
• An apprentice uplift that misses an anniversary. An apprentice who is 19+ AND has completed the first year of the apprenticeship moves off the apprentice rate. Both conditions, simultaneously. This is the single most common underpayment finding on apprenticeship payrolls.
• An accommodation-offset that breaches NMW after deduction. Employer-provided accommodation can be offset up to the daily cap, but the pay after offset must still meet NMW for the hours worked in the pay-reference period. A live-in role at exactly NMW with any accommodation deduction is automatically underpaid.
• Salaried-hours workers whose contracted hours undercount actual hours. A monthly-paid worker on a fixed salary is in NMW breach if their actual hours that month (training, travel between jobs, overtime worked but not banked) push the effective hourly rate below the relevant band.
• Deductions or payments to the employer. Uniform purchases, tool deposits and till-shortage clawbacks all count as reductions to NMW pay. If they push the effective rate below the floor, that is a breach.

Each of the above is dated against the current Section 17 NMWA 1998 enforcement guidance and re-checked on the monthly sweep.

The same four-tone palette codes the rate values themselves so the eye lands on the meaning, not the digit.

• Year-over-year uplift badges on the history ledger: lime for +>5% (real-terms gain), cyan for +3-5% (CPI-ish hold), amber for 0-3% (sub-CPI drift), coral for any cash cut.
• Compare pages colour the higher-paying jurisdiction or rate in lime and the lower in coral, with the two figures sat side by side. Equal figures fall back to slate.

Both rules live in src/components/DeltaBadge.tsx so any new page picks them up automatically.

The named verifier is Oliver Wakefield-Smith (Digital Signet). Last verification: 22 June 2026.

If you spot an inaccurate figure, email oliver@digitalsignet.com with the page URL and the GOV.UK or LPC source you believe is correct. Every accepted change lands in /changelog against a dated commit. Corrections are not backdated silently; the changelog row carries the date the rate was wrong and the date it was fixed.