Many of the cases we are dealing with involve sponsored workers, which has the added risk that if NMW non-compliance is discovered, it could result in your sponsor licence being revoked and you having to dismiss all sponsored workers. In every case we have dealt with recently it has been an unintentional misapplication or misunderstanding of the rules, but that doesn’t provide any defence.
With sponsored workers, providers are often funding many additional costs to relocate, settle, and get them work ready in the UK. However, they often believe that provided they put a contract in place to recover these costs through deductions from pay, they are compliant and permitted to do so. However, that won’t necessarily be the case and an assessment of how HMRC would treat each type of deduction is required to determine whether it would reduce pay for NMW purposes.
