Fair Work Agency | How & why the National Minimum Wage list is catching hundreds of employers

On 3 September, the government published the names of 658 employers that had underpaid the National Minimum Wage, the first released under the newly formed Fair Work Agency.

Published by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), it named 658 employers who between them repaid more than £4.2million to around 27,600 workers and collected roughly £7m in penalties. 

HR Grapevine spoke with Nick Irvin, Director of Employment Tax at Ryan, and a former HMRC employment status policy official, to understand the pitfalls of, and mechanics behind, this decades-old convention, and how over 600 UK employers have been caught lacking. 

The Fair Work Agency took over enforcement of the national minimum wage from HMRC in April 2026.