Can staff rent leave a seasonal worker below minimum wage?

A farm caravan or hotel staff room can make a seasonal job possible. It also puts your wages and your home in the same employer’s hands. Rent can leave you with less cash than the headline minimum wage without breaking that law. But the employer cannot count an unlimited amount for the room. The difference is worth checking before your final payslip.

What to do today

Do this before the rota changes and before anyone collects the key. A promise to sort the rent at the end of the season does not stop a deadline.

1. Record the room and the work. List each whole day the accommodation was provided, what you paid, and any compulsory utility charges. Note whether the employer deducted it or you paid separately. Record hours actually worked, including required opening and closing work omitted from the rota.
2. Keep copies you control. Save the payslips, housing agreement, rotas and rent messages somewhere outside a work phone or account. Photograph the room if conditions are unsafe. Our payslip guide explains your right to written pay details.
3. Check each pay period. Multiply whole days by £11.10. If the charge exceeds that offset, subtract only the excess from the gross pay that counts. If the room is free, add the offset. Divide the result by the hours that count. Compare it with your minimum-wage rate. Tips cannot make up a shortfall. Our underpayment guide covers unpaid hours and other deductions.
4. Ask for repayment, if it is safe. Use the message below. A union or advice worker can check it first. You do not have to confront the employer before reporting underpayment.
5. Report it without losing your claim deadline. Use the pay and work rights complaint form. Ask for your identity to be withheld, but remember that a small site may work out who complained. If you may bring a tribunal claim in Great Britain, notify Acas for early conciliation in time. A helpline call or enforcement complaint is not that notification. In Northern Ireland, contact the Labour Relations Agency instead.

For pay problems arising on or after 1 October 2026, the usual Great Britain tribunal limit is six months minus one day from the incorrect payment. Earlier underpayments normally have a three-month-minus-one-day limit. A series spanning the change needs individual advice. Timely Acas notification pauses the clock during early conciliation; a grievance or enforcement complaint does not. Use our time-limits guide and deadline calculator, and get advice before the earliest possible deadline.

Unite and GMB are starting points for farm and hospitality workers. Ask whether membership covers a dispute that has already started. Our union guide helps you choose. Citizens Advice or a law centre can help you check the figures and choose between enforcement and a claim. For visa-linked work, try the Work Rights Centre; on a Scottish farm, try the Worker Support Centre. If the job is ending, seek housing advice at the same time.

How the £11.10 accommodation offset works

The figure is in the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 16, substituted by the 2026 amendment regulations. From 1 April 2026 it is £11.10 a day. Seven whole days is 7 × £11.10 = £77.70. GOV.UK’s weekly number is that multiplication, not a cap for a short week or a calendar month.

Living accommodation is the only benefit in kind that counts towards minimum wage. Regulation 10 excludes meals, cars and vouchers. A free room is different. The offset is added to your pay, so a cash wage below the headline rate can be lawful. “The room covers it” still needs a calculation.

Regulation 14 reduces the pay that counts only by the excess charge. At £12.50 a day, £1.40 comes off the calculation, not £12.50. At or below £11.10 a day, a paid room does not change it. This is why your cash after rent can be below the headline minimum without a minimum-wage breach.

The offset is a counting rule, not permission to take money. A charge within it can still be an unlawful deduction if your employer had no right to deduct it. In Great Britain, that is a separate test under the Employment Rights Act 1996. For the minimum-wage calculation, deducting rent and receiving it separately have the same effect, where the employer is entitled to the charge.

First establish who provides the housing and whether it counts as living accommodation. Then compare the charge with the offset.

HMRC treats the employer as the provider if it owns or rents the place, the job and housing depend on each other, or the employer benefits from the landlord. Shared ownership, directors, partners, shareholders or a group connection can also bring a separate landlord within the rules. See NMWM10040. A different company name on the rent agreement does not settle it.

If your employer merely forwards rent to an unconnected private landlord and gets no benefit, the accommodation offset does not apply. That pass-through deduction does not itself reduce minimum-wage pay under HMRC’s ordinary deduction rules. Fees or a benefit to the employer can change the result.

An employer-owned caravan is living accommodation. A pitch for your own caravan is not. NMWM10090 draws that distinction. You need not actually sleep in accommodation that has been provided for the offset to apply. Regulation 14 also has exceptions for certain educational institutions housing their own students and certain social landlords. These are not a general escape route for a farm or hotel.

Minimum wage protects workers, not only employees. Casual pickers, zero-hours housekeepers and agency cleaners can qualify. Where an agency, hotel or umbrella company is involved, keep both the pay and housing agreements so an adviser can identify who owes the wage and who provides the room. A genuinely self-employed person is outside minimum-wage protection, but the label on the contract does not decide status. See our guides to false self-employment, seasonal contracts and agency work.

£100 can leave your pocket. The wage check only sees the excess.

A caravan and a hotel room

He returns the caravan at noon on 30 September, in a week that started on 24 September. A day counts only if the room was provided for the whole of it. Six days is 6 × £11.10 = £66.60. A payslip that still takes £100 is £33.40 over the offset. One that takes £77.70 for six days is still £11.10 over. Check that last week before you travel. Our final-pay guide covers when the money is due.

At 40 hours and £12.71, a charge of exactly £77.70 leaves the minimum-wage calculation unchanged. Charge £85 instead and the employer must pay at least £508.40 + £7.30 = £515.70. An hourly cash rate of £12.89 produces only £515.60, still 10p short; £12.90 produces enough. These examples isolate housing. Other deductions or unpaid working time can change the result.

The daily offset does not shrink for a younger worker or a rain-shortened rota. From 1 April 2026, the hourly rates are £12.71 for those aged 21 and over, £10.85 at 18 to 20, and £8.00 for eligible under-18 workers and qualifying apprentices. Check which applies in our rates guide. On a Seasonal Worker visa, there is a separate basic-pay requirement below.

Bills, landlords and short weeks

Anything you must pay to use the room joins the charge compared with the offset, including compulsory gas, waste or wifi charges. Optional extras do not enter that accommodation calculation. They can still reduce minimum-wage pay in full if they are for the employer’s use or benefit. The employer cannot transfer its own utility liability to you and escape the ordinary rules. See NMWM10170. Ask for an itemised split rather than accepting “£90 all in”. A meal charge does not get the accommodation allowance.

Housed all 30 days of a monthly pay period? The offset is 30 × £11.10 = £333. A £350 charge leaves £17. Do not subtract £77.70 four times and call it a month. Thirty-one days is £344.10.

Regulation 15 scales the charge only if you were absent, still paid at least the minimum for the hours missed, and the charge did not rise. Multiply the charge by hours worked, and divide by hours you would have worked. A farm that simply offers fewer hours has not triggered that. There is no rule that shrinks a seven-day rent because the rota collapsed.

Mould does not switch off the UK minimum-wage offset. Scottish and Welsh agricultural rules have separate conditions, explained below. Seasonal Worker sponsors must monitor safe, hygienic housing in good repair and prevent additional, unnecessary charges. That is not a ban on every extra charge. A room can pass the wage calculation and still breach housing or sponsor requirements. Raise unsafe conditions with a housing adviser or the council as well as checking pay. Our farm safety and hospitality safety guides cover hazards at work.

When the contract ends, the room can go too

Losing the job can put the room at risk, but living on your employer’s premises does not automatically make you removable that day. Your housing status matters. This section explains England only. Get local advice in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

In England, you may be a service occupier if living there is essential to doing the job, or genuinely required by your contract for the better performance of your duties. An employer cannot create that status just by writing an artificial live-in requirement. A housekeeper required to be on site may qualify; being a seasonal picker in a farm caravan does not settle it by itself.

A service occupier’s right to stay normally ends with employment, without a notice to quit. What the employer can then do depends on whether the occupier is excluded from court-order protection.

Shelter explains that accepting lower wages because accommodation comes with the job is paying rent in “money’s worth”. A room described as “free” therefore does not automatically make you an excluded occupier. If you do not have to live there for the job, you may instead have a tenancy or a different licence. Get the agreement checked before leaving or refusing to go.

Some farm workers who meet the qualifying work, ownership and occupation conditions have stronger rights under agricultural housing legislation. These can survive the job ending. Shelter’s agricultural occupancy guide explains the tests. A former service occupier can approach an English council as homeless even while remaining in the room without permission. Whether the council owes accommodation duties also depends on eligibility and other tests. Take the employment and housing agreements along with any dismissal message.

If you are on a Seasonal Worker visa

Minimum wage and visa pay rules are separate checks. For horticulture, the sponsor must confirm at least 32 paid hours a week and £12.71 for each hour worked. Accommodation allowances do not count towards the guaranteed basic gross pay. A free room that makes the minimum-wage calculation pass cannot make up a visa basic-pay shortfall.

The Home Office sponsor guidance, SE6.10 and SE6.11, also applies the 32-hour rule to specified poultry roles. It permits reasonable averaging where workers are paid over longer periods, such as fortnightly or monthly. A 20-hour wet week is a reason to check the guarantee, not automatic proof of a sponsor breach. Workers must not face excessive hours at the end of the pay period to reach the average.

Check the guidance applying when your Certificate of Sponsorship was assigned too. SE6.3 expressly refers to the pay rates in that version.

The scheme operator, not necessarily the individual farm, is your immigration sponsor. It must monitor wages, housing and welfare, and hold the required gangmaster’s licence, now administered by the Fair Work Agency. Tell it in writing about a shortfall or unsafe room and ask for its transfer procedure. Under SE3.7 and SE3.8, operators must have a clear pathway and must normally allow requests to change employer unless there are significant reasons not to.

A March 2024 study funded by the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre documented workers’ fear of reporting when jobs, housing and immigration security were linked. Get immigration advice if you fear retaliation. Losing a placement is not automatically the same as losing your visa. If the sponsor itself loses its licence, see our revocation guide. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The £11.10 UK offset applies in all four nations. Agricultural wage rules can impose a lower deduction limit or a different allowance as well as a higher wage. Check both calculations. None of these figures decides your tenancy or eviction rights.

Scotland

The Agricultural Wages (Scotland) Order (No. 73) 2026 keeps the other-accommodation deduction limit at £10.66 a day from 1 April 2026. Seven days is £74.62. A deduction within that limit is below the £77.70 UK offset, so it does not itself reduce UK minimum-wage pay.

At the £12.71 UK hourly floor, a £100 housing charge for seven days creates a £22.30 minimum-wage shortfall. A £100 deduction is also £25.38 above Scotland’s £74.62 limit. These are overlapping calculations, not amounts to add together. Check Scottish agricultural pay and any higher entitlement too, using mygov.scot.

Wales

Welsh Government guidance confirms that the 2025 order continues in 2026, with wage rates superseded where the UK minimum is higher. The accommodation figures remain £1.97 a week for a house and £6.31 a day for other accommodation. Under article 14, the daily allowance requires at least 15 hours in the week, with qualifying leave counting. The accommodation must meet the order’s fitness and safety conditions and provide a bed and drinking water.

Seven eligible days at £6.31 is £44.17. An employer cannot replace that figure with the higher UK offset when checking the Welsh agricultural entitlement. A charge can pass the UK minimum-wage calculation and still breach the agricultural rules.

Northern Ireland and older English farm contracts

Northern Ireland’s Agricultural Wages Board Order No. 106 sets a £60 weekly agricultural accommodation offset from the first pay period beginning on or after 1 April 2026. That is not the £77.70 UK figure. Ask for both calculations and use the Labour Relations Agency for tribunal conciliation. Do not assume the Great Britain deadline extension applies. Our Northern Ireland guide explains the different system.

In England, check older agricultural terms if you were employed before 1 October 2013. GOV.UK’s agricultural workers’ rights guide explains the surviving 2012 order entitlements.

What is in force, and what is not

The Employment Rights Act 2025 does not rewrite the accommodation-offset calculation. Enforcement arrangements and claim deadlines have changed, while other protections remain scheduled or promised.

1. 1 April 2026New UK rates in force

   The daily offset becomes £11.10 and the hourly minimum for workers aged 21 and over becomes £12.71. Use the rates applying at the start of your pay reference period.

2. April 2026Fair Work Agency established

   Minimum-wage enforcement and gangmaster licensing come under the new agency. Use the pay and work rights complaint route for underpayment.

3. 1 October 2026Longer Great Britain tribunal limit

   Acas confirms six months minus one day for most claims arising on or after this date. Earlier pay problems normally retain the three-month limit. Get advice on a series of deductions and use early conciliation in time.

4. 2027Guaranteed-hours reforms scheduled

   The government’s roadmap schedules guaranteed-hours rights for zero-hours and agency workers. These are not a general right to use on 1 October 2026. Existing contractual or visa hours guarantees are separate.

The Low Pay Commission’s accommodation review recommended that the offset should not rise faster than other minimum-wage rates without better, enforced housing standards and protection for workers whose hours fluctuate. It proposed a minimum-hours threshold before accommodation charges could be deducted. That is not the current UK offset rule, and the recommendation did not freeze the offset. It rose from £10.66 to £11.10 in April 2026, about 4.1%, in line with the adult minimum-wage rise.

Questions people ask

Can my employer charge more than £77.70 a week for a room?

The UK minimum-wage rule does not impose that rent cap. £77.70 is the offset for seven whole days from 1 April 2026. Only the excess reduces the pay counted for minimum wage. If that leaves you below your rate, your employer owes a shortfall. Agricultural rules can impose separate limits, and deductions still need a lawful basis.

Does paying rent after payday change the result?

No. A charge the employer is entitled to receive has the same minimum-wage effect whether deducted or paid separately. If rent goes to another landlord, check whether the employer provides the accommodation through a connection or benefits from the arrangement.

If my room is free, can my cash wage be below £12.71?

It can pass the UK minimum-wage calculation if adding £11.10 for each whole day provided brings the total up to your applicable rate. That does not override a higher contractual or agricultural entitlement. Seasonal Worker visa basic-pay rules are separate, and accommodation allowances cannot make up that salary requirement.

Does a caravan or a gas bill count?

An employer-owned caravan counts as living accommodation; a pitch for your own caravan does not. Charges you must pay to use the room, including compulsory utilities, join the accommodation charge. Optional charges may still reduce minimum-wage pay under the ordinary rules. Ask for an itemised bill.

Does damp or unsafe housing cancel the offset?

Not under the UK minimum-wage rules alone. Scottish and Welsh agricultural provisions have separate conditions. Seasonal Worker sponsors also have housing and welfare duties. Report conditions as a housing or welfare problem as well as checking the wage calculation.

Can my employer evict me when the season ends?

It depends on your housing status and nation. In England, a service occupier’s right to stay normally ends with employment, but an employer usually needs the court process unless the occupier is excluded. A room described as free may not be legally rent-free if you accept lower wages for it. Get housing advice before the contract ends rather than assuming either immediate eviction or a right to remain.

Sources

1. National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 16, legislation.gov.uk. Daily offset, whole days and pay-period start rule.
2. National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 14, legislation.gov.uk. Accommodation charges and exceptions.
3. National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 15, legislation.gov.uk. Paid-absence adjustment.
4. National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 10, legislation.gov.uk. Pay and benefits excluded from the calculation.
5. National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2026, legislation.gov.uk. Rates from 1 April 2026.
6. National Minimum Wage: accommodation and effect on the minimum wage, GOV.UK. Free, charged and separately paid accommodation.
7. National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates, GOV.UK.
8. NMWM10040: when an employer provides accommodation, HMRC.
9. NMWM10090: caravans and pitches, HMRC.
10. NMWM10160: accommodation charges and NMWM10170: other charges and third-party landlords, HMRC.
11. Employment tribunal time limits and early conciliation, Acas. Deadline guidance updated 1 October 2026.
12. Pay and work rights complaints, GOV.UK; early conciliation, Labour Relations Agency.
13. Sponsor a Seasonal Worker, sections SE3 and SE6, Home Office. Later consolidated guidance published 8 October 2026; its change log does not identify changes to the pay, housing or transfer provisions relied on here.
14. Agricultural Wages (Scotland) Order (No. 73) 2026, Part 6, Scottish Government; agricultural minimum wage, mygov.scot.
15. Agricultural Wages (Wales) Order 2025, article 14, legislation.gov.uk; agricultural wages: minimum rates of pay, Welsh Government. Confirms continuing accommodation allowances in 2026.
16. Pay increase for agricultural workers, DAERA, 19 March 2026.
17. Agricultural workers’ rights, GOV.UK. Older English agricultural entitlements.
18. Service occupiers and agricultural occupancy, Shelter Legal England. Housing status, eviction and homelessness.
19. Employment Rights Act implementation roadmap, GOV.UK. Scheduled reforms are distinguished from current entitlements.
20. Reviewing the accommodation offset, Low Pay Commission, 3 February 2023.
21. National Minimum Wage enforcement and compliance report 2024 to 2025, Department for Business and Trade. Source for £5.8 million in arrears and 25,200 workers in the first reality check.
22. Visas and vulnerability: research summary, Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre, March 2024.
23. Scotland commits to seasonal farm housing standards, Worker Support Centre, 3 December 2025. Source for the reported 20% rent share and standards commitment in the second reality check.