Are unpaid internships legal in the UK?

If you are doing the work, calling you an intern does not make it free. A rota in a care home, a trial shift in a kitchen, a day picking online orders or writing posts for an agency can all be work. If you are required to do it personally and no exemption applies, you may be owed minimum wage. If an employer owes you that pay and withholds it, that is wage theft. After your shift today, save the advert and rota, write down your hours and keep any messages about pay. Then check the deadline. It may already be running.

The job title does not decide the pay

“Intern”, “placement” and “work experience” are not separate legal statuses. Under section 54 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, a worker has a contract of employment or another contract to perform work or services personally for someone who is not their client or customer in a genuinely self-employed business. Employees are workers too. The agreement can be written, oral or implied by what happens on the job.

Useful tasks alone do not establish worker status. An unpaid food-bank volunteer can also answer phones and take instructions. Look at the whole arrangement. Can the organiser insist on attendance and performance? What has each side promised? Is there pay, a perk or a promised paid job? Government guidance says a regular rota and a manager’s expectations do not necessarily turn a freely participating volunteer into a worker. An editor who requires an intern to produce copy on set days, however, may have made a binding agreement even without paperwork. The same question applies when a care assistant shadows a shift but ends up covering tasks, a shop assistant works a “trial” on the till, or a warehouse placement is put on the picking rota. A cleaner covering a scheduled shift or a delivery rider handling orders may be doing the same kind of required work.

If the arrangement makes you a worker, you are owed minimum wage for eligible working time, including required training time, unless an exemption applies. A genuinely self-employed contractor working for a client or customer is outside this worker test. Calling an intern “freelance” cannot make them self-employed.

How to tell a worker from a volunteer

Start with the work. If you only observe a meeting or follow a professional for a day, you are shadowing, not doing the job. Once you draft the brief or handle the client account, check the agreement. Have you undertaken to perform work personally for the organisation, or are you free to decline it? Pay is powerful evidence, but reward is not a separate statutory prerequisite. An obligation to work personally can be inferred from conduct. A promise of future paid work can itself point to worker status.

Refunding the cost of an actual bus journey need not turn volunteering into paid work. But if a design studio pays a flat £50 “travel allowance” to someone who walks in, that excess is a financial reward and strong evidence that the person is a worker. For a charity’s voluntary worker exemption, the statute also permits expenses reasonably estimated as likely to be incurred. A fixed amount is not automatically fatal, but you must be able to justify it as expenses, not disguised pay.

Are unpaid internships legal in the UK?

Shadowing and genuine volunteering

Observation-only shadowing involves no work. Genuine volunteering can involve useful tasks, including at a business. The question is whether there is a worker’s contract. Volunteers can have a regular pattern and be asked to give notice when they cannot attend. They cannot be required to turn up, sued or penalised for refusing the work. The organiser may reimburse reasonable out-of-pocket costs. Do not confuse this non-worker category with a voluntary worker, who does have worker status but qualifies for a statutory minimum-wage exemption.

Voluntary workers for qualifying bodies

Section 44 exempts a worker engaged by a charity, voluntary organisation, associated fund-raising body or statutory body if the payment and benefits conditions are met. They may receive expenses actually incurred or reasonably estimated for their duties, including reasonable costs that enable them to do the work. Benefits in kind are restricted to reasonable subsistence or accommodation. A £200 honorarium is not an expense. Nor can a commercial agency simply describe its unpaid intern as a “voluntary worker”.

Check the training too. Training acquired through doing the job, or provided mainly to improve ability to do that job, is disregarded. Other training can count as a benefit in kind and defeat this exemption. Even where section 44 removes minimum-wage entitlement, other worker rights may still apply. HMRC explains the boundary.

Required education placements

Regulation 53 covers work experience required as part of a further or higher education course before that course ends. The placement must last no more than one year, and the course must meet the UK-based requirements in government guidance. A compulsory sandwich placement can qualify. An unrelated summer job cannot. Being a student, or finding a placement through a university careers page, does not itself create an exemption.

School age and specified schemes

Someone of compulsory school age is not entitled to minimum wage. School-leaving rules differ across the UK. The law also exempts participants in specified government training and work-experience programmes, certain EU learning programmes and Jobcentre Plus work trials lasting no more than six weeks. These are defined schemes, not permission for any employer to call a six-week internship a “trial”. See the government eligibility guidance.

How much must a paid intern receive?

These are the UK-wide minimum hourly rates in force since 1 April 2026. The National Living Wage is the legal minimum for workers aged 21 and over, not a separate voluntary “living wage”.

The apprentice rate requires a qualifying apprenticeship. The word “apprentice” in the advert is not enough. Someone aged 19 or over who has completed its first year gets the age rate. Working hours can include required training and time you must spend at the workplace available for work, even when no tasks arrive. Ordinary travel from home to work usually does not count. The calculation depends on the pay reference period and type of work. If an employer provides accommodation, the maximum accommodation offset is £11.10 per day from 1 April 2026. Charging more can reduce pay counted for minimum-wage purposes.

How to set up an internship or volunteering role

Record the arrangement before it begins, then update it as duties change. A written document helps show what was agreed. It cannot override worker status. For a paid internship, specify the actual work, hours, rate, pay dates, supervision and training. For a required course placement, confirm the course requirement, provider and dates. If you offer shadowing, keep it to observation. Do not quietly assign production work.

1. Decide the status from the real duties. If personal work is required and no exemption fits, budget at least minimum wage from the start.
2. Distinguish the two volunteer categories. A genuine volunteer is free to decline. A section 44 voluntary worker can have agreed duties, but the organisation must qualify and the expenses and benefits must meet the exemption’s conditions.
3. Record expenses honestly. Pay actual or reasonably estimated qualifying costs, not an honorarium dressed as travel. Keep evidence of how you reached the estimates.
4. Protect people at work. Explain supervision, health and safety, safeguarding where relevant, and how either side raises concerns or ends the arrangement.

A brief, genuine skills test may be different from a productive shift. There is no general “trial day” exemption. If an employer uses the applicant to cover normal work over several shifts, calling it an audition will not settle the pay question. An advert for “expenses only” work can itself attract enforcement attention.

What rights come with worker status?

Many interns who are workers also have paid holiday, normally 5.6 weeks a year, pro rata for a shorter placement. They also have rest breaks and working-time protections, whistleblowing protection and a day-one written statement of employment particulars. Statutory sick pay has its own eligibility conditions and generally requires employee classification. Its lower earnings limit and waiting days were removed on 6 April 2026. A person with a contract personally to do work can also be covered by the Equality Act 2010 in Great Britain. Do not assume that the section 44 minimum-wage exemption removes all these other rights.

An intern may instead be an employee, with additional rights that depend on the statutory conditions, including notice, family leave, redundancy and unfair dismissal protection. The standard unfair-dismissal qualifying period remains two years on 1 October 2026. The government schedules a reduction to six months for dismissals from January 2027. A genuine volunteer without a contract is not automatically covered by employment-rights legislation, though organisers still need to consider safety duties. Equality Act coverage of volunteers without a contract is legally uncertain. Do not promise them either coverage or an absolute exclusion.

Power matters when you raise this. If you work in care or health, contact UNISON or Unite; in retail, USDAW; in hospitality, Unite; in warehouses or delivery, GMB, Unite or the IWGB. A union can help you act with colleagues rather than alone. For discrimination, the Equality Advisory and Support Service can explain the EHRC route. Report unsafe work to the Health and Safety Executive where its remit applies. If an agency or employer is exploiting workers in sectors covered by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, report it to the GLAA. These routes do different jobs: they do not replace an HMRC minimum-wage complaint.

What if you should have been paid?

After your shift, take ten minutes and do this in order. Save the advert, rota, messages and expense records. Write down each day’s start and finish times, breaks, training and tasks while you still remember them. Keep a copy of work you produced and calculate the pay you received against your hours. Then ask the organiser in writing to confirm your status and pay the arrears. Make a minimum-wage complaint to HMRC; you do not need the employer’s permission. Call Acas on 0300 123 1100 for advice. Citizens Advice or a local law centre can help you work through the next step. If dismissal or a deduction is involved, note the date now. The tribunal clock may be running.

The Fair Work Agency, established on 7 April 2026, enforces minimum wage across the UK through HMRC officers acting on its behalf. A Notice of Underpayment can require arrears recalculated using the current rate if higher. The usual civil penalty is 200% of the underpayment, subject to a £100 minimum and a £20,000-per-worker maximum. It is reduced by half if the arrears and reduced penalty are paid in full within 14 days. Public naming is possible under the agency’s policy, but a notice, penalty and naming are not automatic in every case.

Do not wait for an internal reply before checking the time limit. In Great Britain, tell Acas within the applicable deadline to start early conciliation; it pauses the clock. For a failure to pay on or after 1 October 2026, the usual deadline is six months minus one day from the relevant unpaid payday, or last deduction in a series. For a failure before that date, the previous three-month limit usually applies. The reform does not revive old claims. Scottish employment-contract tribunal claims have a separate 9 November 2026 commencement date. Get advice about the route and exact deadline if that applies.

Minimum-wage rates and the Fair Work Agency’s minimum-wage remit cover Northern Ireland too. But employment law is devolved there. The Great Britain tribunal-limit change does not automatically apply, and the forum is the Industrial Tribunal. Seek local advice promptly rather than relying on the six-month Great Britain deadline.