Care workers’ pay: travel time, sleep-ins and the minimum wage
The road between care visits is part of the job. Count it before you trust the hourly rate on your payslip.
You finish helping someone wash and dress, then spend twenty-five minutes getting to the next house. Those minutes count for the minimum wage. If your agency pays only for the visit, the £13 rate on your payslip can become £11.06 across the hours you actually worked. The missing pay belongs to you. Start by recording the journeys as carefully as the calls.
- £12.71
- age 21 and over, from 1 April 2026
- 55p
- car mileage tax rate, first 10,000 business miles
- 200%
- underpayment penalty, capped at £20,000 per worker
- 1 month
- maximum pay reference period
What to do tonight
The legal clock does not wait for a coordinator to look into it. Get the hours written down somewhere you control.
- Write the day down. Record each visit’s start and finish, travel between visits and any waiting. Note whether the office required you to stay somewhere or do anything during a gap. For a sleep-in, record when you woke for work, what you did and how long it took.
- Save your evidence. Keep rotas, payslips, mileage records, job-related deductions and messages about your hours somewhere you can access after leaving. Do not copy service users’ medical records or identifying details into a personal email or diary.
- Check one pay period. Use the week or month your pay covers, not one visit or a whole year. The worked example below shows the calculation.
- Ask in writing. State the hours and shortfall. Use the message below and keep your request and any reply. Seven days is a response deadline you choose, not a legal waiting period before reporting.
- Get help or report it. You can report suspected underpayment without first confronting your employer. HMRC currently enforces the minimum wage. Asking the office to investigate does not stop a tribunal deadline.
UNISON and GMB organise care workers. A rep can check the rota and payslip with you, and colleagues may have the same missing hours. If you are joining a union after a dispute starts, ask what help membership covers. Do not assume it includes legal representation for an existing dispute. Acas, Citizens Advice and law centres offer free advice. You do not need a solicitor to report underpayment.
If your visa is tied to this employer, or you are afraid of losing shifts, talk to the union or a law centre before you confront a manager. You can report after you have left.
What counts as time worked
The minimum wage is an average across your pay reference period, the period your pay covers, capped at one month. Use the dates on your payslip. Pay above the minimum for some hours can cover other hours in the same period, but an employer cannot average a low-paid month against a better-paid month.
Qualifying pay divided by counted hours must reach £12.71 for workers aged 21 and over outside the apprentice band. The rates below apply across the UK from the first pay reference period starting on or after 1 April 2026.
| Age or category | Hourly minimum |
|---|---|
| 21 and over, outside the apprentice band | £12.71 |
| 18 to 20, outside the apprentice band | £10.85 |
| Under 18, above compulsory school leaving age | £8.00 |
| Apprentice under 19, or 19 and over in the first year | £8.00 |
From April 2025 to March 2026 the rate for workers aged 21 and over was £12.21. Use the rate that applied at the time to establish whether you were underpaid. Older arrears can then be increased under the statutory repayment formula, explained below. Our minimum wage guide covers the other rates and age-band changes.
Travel between visits
Travel between visits you are obliged to make counts as time worked. Regulations 20 and 34 say so. HMRC’s manual includes, as travelling for the purpose of working, time between assignments at different places which the worker has to travel to.
Count the time you actually took. HMRC will not accept an “optimal” route, or times for a different way of travelling from the one you used. Traffic counts. Waiting for a connection counts. A genuine break mid-journey does not.
Pay for travel time goes into the pay side of the calculation. Travel minutes still go into the hours. A contact rate above the minimum, with no separate travel-time pay, is not automatically unlawful. It becomes unlawful when qualifying pay divided by all the counted hours falls below your minimum rate.
A contact rate is not your hourly rate. The road between the houses is part of the job.
Home, and the gaps
The ordinary journey from home to the first call, and from the last call home, is commuting and does not count for the minimum wage. Do not let that exclusion swallow the journeys between service users. Those are travel for work.
Waiting at the end of a journey to carry out your duties can count under regulation 20. For example, you arrive at the next house and have to wait for the visit to start. HMRC distinguishes genuine breaks from waiting for work. Being required to remain at a specified place, ready for work, also matters. A gap is not automatically working time simply because it is too short to go home.
If you spend forty minutes outside the next house because the office requires you to wait there, record that instruction. If you are free to leave and take a genuine break, the break does not count. A requirement to stay contactable alone does not necessarily make the gap work. HMRC’s on-call guidance looks at the actual restrictions and duties. Keep the rota and messages to support your recorded waiting time. Rest-break rights are a separate question.
| What you did | Counts? |
|---|---|
| Home to the first visit | No, if this is ordinary commuting. |
| The care visit | Yes. |
| Driving, walking or waiting for a connection between visits | Yes. Use actual time, including traffic. |
| Waiting at the next visit, ready to carry out duties | Can count. Record the instructions and restrictions. |
| A genuine break | No. |
| Last visit back home | No, if this is ordinary commuting. |
| Available during a genuine sleep-in, with suitable sleeping facilities | Only time awake for the purpose of working counts. |
| A waking night | Yes. Every working hour counts. |
Check the pay period, not the contact rate
Start with gross pay, before income tax and National Insurance, not the money arriving in your bank account. Include ordinary wages, pay for travel time and any qualifying sleep-in allowance. Expense reimbursements, such as mileage paid back, are not wages for this test. Subtract job-related deductions and unreimbursed work expenses that reduce minimum wage pay. Then divide by the hours that count.
These examples use time-paid work. If your contract meets the legal definition of salaried hours work, the rules allocate annual basic hours across pay periods and deal separately with excess hours. Keep the same records, but ask an adviser to check that calculation rather than assuming a monthly salary means only the hours on the rota count.
Example: Amina’s contact rate
Amina is over 21, not an apprentice and paid monthly for domiciliary care. Her agency pays £13 an hour for contact time only. She works 120 contact hours in the period, so her gross pay is 120 × £13 = £1,560. Assume no deductions or work expenses.
She also spends 15 hours travelling between visits and 6 hours required to wait at the next visit, ready to work. Her counted hours are 120 + 15 + 6 = 141.
Her average is £1,560 ÷ 141 = £11.06 an hour, rounded to the nearest penny. To calculate the money owed, do not multiply a rounded hourly shortfall. Required pay is 141 × £12.71 = £1,792.11. Subtract £1,560 and the agency owes £232.11. The payslip can say £13 and still show an unlawful underpayment.
Example: the same month, plus unreimbursed travel costs
Suppose Amina also incurs £60 of unreimbursed, qualifying motoring expenses for journeys between visits. This is an assumed cost for the example, not an official mileage rate. Her minimum wage pay becomes £1,560 minus £60 = £1,500. Divided by 141 hours, that is £10.64 an hour.
The required pay remains £1,792.11. With the expense adjustment, the shortfall is £292.11. Keep receipts and a mileage log so the cost can be assessed rather than guessed.
Even a smaller shortfall matters. In an example with underpayment of 45p an hour across 140 hours each month, twelve months cost you 0.45 × 140 × 12 = £756, before any statutory uplift to older arrears. That is money for food and bills, not a payroll rounding error.
Sleep-ins and waking nights
On 19 March 2021 the Supreme Court decided Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake, heard with Shannon v Rampersad. For a genuine sleep-in, where you are expected to sleep and suitable sleeping facilities are provided, only time awake for the purpose of working counts for the minimum wage. Being awake because you cannot sleep is not the same as being awake for work.
For time work, the sleep-in rule is in regulation 32. For salaried hours work, it is in regulation 27. A flat allowance can therefore be lawful even though dividing it by every hour in the building gives less than £12.71. But medication, personal care or responding to an incident during the night must enter the counted hours. Your contract may also promise more than the statutory minimum.
A waking night is different. If you are expected to stay awake and work, the working hours count in full. Calling that shift a “sleep-in” does not turn it into one. The employer cannot borrow the Mencap exception for a shift spent doing observations, answering alarms or providing care throughout the night.
Genuine sleep-in
- You are expected to sleep, with suitable facilities
- Time awake for the purpose of working counts
- A flat allowance can be lawful
- The whole pay period must still meet the minimum
Waking night
- You are expected to remain awake and work
- All working hours count
- The sleep-in exception does not apply
- Check the full pay period and any contractual night rate
Example: Joan’s night
Joan is over 21 and not an apprentice. She does a genuine sleep-in from 10pm to 7am for a £45 allowance. If she sleeps through without being awake for work, the nine hours do not enter the minimum wage calculation. The allowance is not unlawful merely because £45 ÷ 9 is £5.
Now suppose she wakes twice to provide care, with 2.5 hours awake for work in total. Add those hours to the period’s counted hours and the qualifying £45 allowance to its pay. £45 ÷ 2.5 is £18 an hour. In this example, adding the allowance and awake hours cannot turn an otherwise compliant period into an underpaid one, although a shortfall elsewhere may remain. You must still check the whole period.
For a waking night with nine working hours, required pay at £12.71 is £114.39. If £45 is the only qualifying pay for those hours, the difference is £69.39. That is the shortfall if this is the period’s only work. With other shifts, calculate the whole period rather than treating the night as a separate legal test.
The same distinction applies in care homes and supported living. Minimum wage hours are separate from the rules on night work, rest and fatigue.
Mileage, a DBS check, and the cost of the job
There is no statutory entitlement to a particular mileage rate. Your contract or a collective agreement may promise reimbursement, so check it. Travel-time pay and the cost of driving are separate questions.
For tax, the approved rate for business travel in your own car or van is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, then 25p. The enacted increase applies to the 2026 to 2027 tax year, starting 6 April 2026. These are tax rules, not a requirement that an employer pay you 55p.
If your employer pays less than the approved amount, you can claim Mileage Allowance Relief on the eligible difference. Relief reduces your tax; it does not repay the whole mileage shortfall or repair unpaid wages. Keep mileage records and reimbursement details. Ordinary commuting is not business mileage for this purpose.
Job-related deductions or payments for a required DBS check, uniform or training can reduce minimum wage pay. A deduction authorised by your contract can still leave you unlawfully underpaid. Our deductions guide explains the separate question of whether the deduction itself is permitted. An employer also cannot charge you for PPE required for work. Tips never count towards the minimum wage.
For live-in carers, employer-provided accommodation has a separate rule. From 1 April 2026 the accommodation offset is £11.10 a day, or £77.70 for seven days. If a qualifying room costs £120 for that week, the excess of £42.30 reduces minimum wage pay. If it is free, the offset can count towards pay, not the room’s market rent.
Living in does not remove your wage rights. The exemption for non-family household workers treated as family ended on 1 April 2024. A separate, narrow exemption remains for actual family members living in the employer’s family home and sharing its tasks and activities. An agency placement is not that arrangement.
Agency, zero hours, and a self-employed label
The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 covers workers, including employees. Zero-hours and bank contracts do not remove that protection. Agency carers have it from day one. Under the agency-worker rules, responsibility rests with whoever is responsible for paying you, whether the agency or the hirer. An agency cannot withhold your wages because the council or care provider has not paid it. After 12 qualifying weeks in the same role, the Agency Workers Regulations can add equal-treatment rights, including pay. That does not delay the minimum wage. See our guides to agency work and zero-hours contracts.
Genuinely self-employed people do not have minimum wage rights, but the label on a contract does not decide your status. If the provider fixes the visits, tells you when to attend and requires you to do the work personally, get the arrangement checked. Our worker-status guide explains what matters. You can report suspected underpayment while status is disputed.
Protection against punishment for asserting minimum wage rights already exists. Workers can challenge detrimental treatment; employees dismissed for asserting those rights may have an automatically unfair dismissal claim without the usual qualifying service. That does not make the risk of lost shifts disappear. Save any threats or changes to your rota and get advice promptly.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
The minimum wage rates and the travel-time and sleep-in rules are UK-wide. Northern Ireland’s official guidance confirms the same wage floor. Local care-funding and regulatory rules can add to it, but cannot cancel it.
Scotland’s £13.45 is not the minimum wage
The Scottish Government funds £13.45 an hour for adult and children’s social care staff delivering direct care in commissioned services, current from 1 April 2026. It is a funding and contract condition, not a statute, and it covers commissioned care hours.
If a provider pays £13.45 only for contact hours, travel and required waiting can still bring the average below £12.71. Check both the funded rate for the work it covers and the UK minimum wage calculation.
Wales and Northern Ireland
In Wales, regulation 41 requires domiciliary providers to schedule care time and travel time separately. Use it to challenge a rota that leaves no time for the journey. It does not set a wage rate. The Real Living Wage used in commissioning policy is a separate standard, not the statutory National Living Wage.
In Northern Ireland, employment law is devolved. Do not assume Great Britain’s Employment Rights Act reforms or tribunal deadlines apply. For conciliation and tribunal advice, use the Labour Relations Agency and Northern Ireland’s industrial tribunal system. England’s proposed Fair Pay Agreement is not a Northern Ireland pay entitlement. Our Northern Ireland guide explains the wider differences.
How to get the money
HMRC can issue a notice of underpayment requiring arrears and a penalty of up to 200% of the arrears, capped at £20,000 per worker. The penalty is reduced by half if the employer complies fully with the notice within 14 days of its service. That does not reduce your arrears. The penalty goes to the state, not you.
Report to HMRC now
Use the pay and work rights complaint form, or call Acas on 0300 123 1100. HMRC considers minimum wage complaints and can investigate underpayment going back up to six years. You can report after leaving. An HMRC complaint does not stop a tribunal deadline, so take advice about the two routes rather than waiting for an investigation to finish.
The Fair Work Agency was established on 7 April 2026. HMRC still handles minimum wage enforcement. Transfer of that function is scheduled for April 2027; Fair Work Agency enforcement of holiday pay is not scheduled to start before then. A new agency is not a reason to delay reporting wages already owed.
Calculate older arrears correctly
The statutory arrears formula starts with the original shortfall. Divide it by the minimum wage rate that applied then, and multiply by the current rate for the age band that applied then. You get the higher of that result and the original shortfall. Do not simply recalculate every old hour at today’s £12.71 or use today’s age band.
Protect the tribunal deadline
You can also seek unpaid wages through a tribunal or civil court. For an unlawful-deduction claim in Great Britain, the ordinary tribunal limit is six months less a day where the relevant deduction was on or after 1 October 2026. For a claim about a series of deductions, the transitional regulations use the last deduction in the series. If the relevant date was before 1 October, the old three-month limit applies. It is not the date you discover the problem or decide to claim.
Notify Acas for early conciliation before the applicable deadline. A helpline call is not that notification. Early conciliation affects the final filing deadline; a grievance or HMRC complaint does not. If deductions span October, ask an adviser whether they form a series and which date applies. Until that is checked, work to the shorter deadline. Our time-limits guide and deadline calculator can help you prepare.
The Fair Pay Agreement is not this month’s pay
On 16 July 2026 the government announced plans for fair pay agreements in adult social care in England, backed by £500 million for the first agreement. The published plan aims for negotiations from April 2027 and a first settlement by April 2028 for 2028 to 2029. Those are future plans, not a higher wage you can demand now. They do not freeze the national minimum wage at £12.71 until 2028.
- New wage rates in force
£12.71 for workers aged 21 and over outside the apprentice band, from the first pay reference period starting on or after this date.
- Fair Work Agency established
In force. HMRC continues minimum wage enforcement.
- Longer tribunal limits in force
Great Britain’s six-month limit applies where the relevant date is on or after this date, subject to the transitional rules.
- Care negotiating body planned
Acas lists the new Adult Social Care Negotiating Body as an upcoming October change. Establishing a body is not itself a pay settlement.
- Enforcement transfer and pay talks scheduled
Minimum wage enforcement is scheduled to move to the Fair Work Agency. England’s first Fair Pay Agreement negotiations are planned to begin.
- First care settlement targeted
The announced aim is a settlement for 2028 to 2029, not wages enforceable today.
Questions people ask
Is a flat £50 for a sleep-in legal?
It can be. On a genuine sleep-in, with suitable facilities and an expectation that you will sleep, only time awake for the purpose of working counts. Add those hours and the qualifying allowance to the period’s calculation. A waking night is different. Nine working hours at £12.71 require £114.39; £50 leaves a £64.39 gap if those are the period’s only hours and pay. Your contract may promise more.
Do forty unpaid minutes between calls count?
They can if you are waiting at the next visit to carry out duties, or required to remain somewhere ready for work. They do not automatically count because the gap is inconvenient or you cannot get home. A genuine break is excluded. Record where you waited, what the office required and whether you could leave.
Must your employer pay 55p a mile?
There is no statutory duty to pay that rate, although your contract may promise mileage reimbursement. For 2026 to 2027, 55p is the approved tax rate for the first 10,000 business miles in your own car or van, with 25p thereafter. You can claim tax relief on an eligible reimbursement shortfall. Unreimbursed work-travel costs can also reduce minimum wage pay, but the tax rate is not an automatic wage-calculation deduction.
Where should you report underpayment, HMRC or the Fair Work Agency?
HMRC currently enforces the minimum wage. Use the pay and work rights complaint form or call Acas on 0300 123 1100. Transfer to the Fair Work Agency is scheduled for April 2027. Do not wait for it, and do not assume a complaint pauses your tribunal deadline.
Sources
- National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates, GOV.UK. Rates from April 2026.
- National Minimum Wage Amendment Regulations 2026, SI 2026/357, legislation.gov.uk.
- National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, Part 5, legislation.gov.uk. Travel, waiting, time work, salaried hours and sleep-ins.
- NMWM08300: travelling time, HMRC.
- NMWM08310: breaks from work, HMRC.
- NMWM08270: on call and standby, HMRC.
- Calculating the minimum wage, GOV.UK.
- NMWM11020: deductions and payments from workers, HMRC.
- Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake; Shannon v Rampersad, [2021] UKSC 8, Supreme Court, 19 March 2021.
- Income Tax Earnings and Pensions Act 2003, section 230, legislation.gov.uk. Enacted 55p and 25p mileage rates for 2026 to 2027.
- Increasing mileage rates, HMRC, 17 June 2026. Mileage Allowance Relief and the announced retrospective change.
- Minimum wage accommodation rules, GOV.UK.
- National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 57, legislation.gov.uk. Non-family household exemption removed from 1 April 2024.
- Eligibility for the minimum wage, GOV.UK. Worker and agency-worker coverage.
- Enforcing the minimum wage, GOV.UK. Complaints, penalties, arrears formula and protection against retaliation.
- Complain about pay and work rights, GOV.UK.
- Hundreds of employers handed penalties for illegally underpaying workers, Department for Business and Trade, 19 March 2026. Naming-round totals and the care-employer findings cited above.
- Care workers forced to cut short home visits or be left out of pocket, The Guardian, 29 January 2019, reporting UNISON’s freedom-of-information research.
- NMWM01045: Fair Work Agency, HMRC.
- Fair Work Agency, GOV.UK. Enforcement transition.
- Employment Rights Act 2025 Commencement No. 5 and Transitional Provisions Amendment Regulations 2026, SI 2026/954, legislation.gov.uk. Regulations 3 and 4 and the Schedule’s entry for section 23 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
- Employment Rights Act 2025 timetable, Acas, updated 1 October 2026.
- Care workers to be represented in fair pay agreements, Department of Health and Social Care, 16 July 2026. England’s planned first agreement.
- Adult social care workers’ minimum pay, Scottish Government, updated 1 April 2026.
- Welsh regulated-services regulations 2017, regulation 41, legislation.gov.uk. Separate scheduling of care and travel time.
- National Minimum Wage and Living Wage, nidirect.
- UNISON; GMB; Acas; Citizens Advice; Law Centres Network; Labour Relations Agency. Union and advice routes.
