TLDR
- Minimum wage UK 2026: from 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour. The 18 to 20 rate is £10.85. The under 18 rate and the apprentice rate are both £8.00. The rates change every 1 April.
- Tips, gratuities, service charges and cover charges do not count towards minimum wage pay, even when they run through your payroll. A uniform you require your staff to buy can pull their pay under the rate.
- HMRC can issue a notice of underpayment with a penalty of up to 200% of the arrears, to a maximum of £20,000 per worker.
- booteek asked six AI assistant set-ups for the 2026 rates. In our check, 36 of 72 answers gave the April 2026 rate. The rest gave an older rate or no figure.
If you pay staff in a UK restaurant or bar, the question for minimum wage UK 2026 is simple. What does every hour on the payslip have to clear, and what is allowed to count towards it? This post gives the rates from the GOV.UK rates page, then the common causes of underpayment GOV.UK lists, then what we found when we asked AI assistants the same question.
What is the minimum wage in the UK from April 2026?
The rates changed on 1 April 2026. The GOV.UK rates page lists them:
| Who | Hourly rate from 1 April 2026 |
|---|---|
| Aged 21 and over (National Living Wage) | £12.71 |
| Aged 18 to 20 | £10.85 |
| Under 18 | £8.00 |
| Apprentice | £8.00 |
The apprentice rate applies to apprentices under 19, and to apprentices aged 19 or over in the first year of their apprenticeship. GOV.UK says an apprentice aged 19 or over who has finished the first year gets the minimum wage for their age.
The Low Pay Commission recommended these rates on 26 November 2025. The National Living Wage rose by 50p, the 18 to 20 rate by 85p, and the youth and apprentice rates by 45p. The accommodation offset, the most an employer can count towards pay for housing a worker, is £11.10 a day or £77.70 a week from April 2026, according to the GOV.UK accommodation page.
UKHospitality estimates the rises add £1.4bn to the sector's costs, as Restaurant Online reported. Your own payroll shows what they add to yours.
Do tips and service charge count towards the minimum wage?
No. GOV.UK's manual on calculating the minimum wage says: "Tips, gratuities, service charges and cover charges do not count towards minimum wage pay." It adds that this is "regardless of whether they are paid through your payroll."
So the hourly pay has to clear the rate on its own. Acas works an example where £100 of tips is taken out of a worker's pay before the check is made.
Does anything in your payroll treat the service charge as part of the hourly total?
Can you take a uniform cost or a deduction from pay?
Only if the pay still clears the rate afterwards. GOV.UK says that if you do not supply required items, "any deductions for those items will always reduce minimum wage pay", whether the worker buys them from you or from someone else. A worker who pays for work-related items and is not repaid has that amount counted against their pay as well.
Acas puts it the other way round: a uniform purchase is allowed "as long as their total pay minus the uniform cost is still above the minimum wage." Tools, most travel costs and mandatory training costs sit in the same group.
Who on your rota is closest to the rate? What did their last payslip look like after the uniform and the deductions?
Do training time and waiting time count?
Yes. For workers paid by the hour, GOV.UK's manual on working hours counts "time spent training". It also counts time spent at the workplace when a worker is required to be available for work, and it makes no difference whether you give them work for that time. Time on standby or on call at or near the workplace counts too, "unless the worker is at home".
Time spent travelling between home and the workplace does not count, unless the worker works while travelling. Rest breaks are not working time for hourly-paid workers.
The common errors on GOV.UK's employer checklist include time added on to a shift, such as team handovers, and time at the workplace when no work is provided.
Does an unpaid trial shift have to be paid?
It can. The manual on eligibility says: "Current law does not define a 'trial work period'". It says whether someone doing a trial is a worker depends on the facts, and that the longer a trial runs, the more likely it creates a contract for work. A trial of a few hours that tests the person and gives you little else may be reasonable. An unpaid trial that runs longer than one full shift, or several days, in a real working environment is likely to carry a minimum wage entitlement, GOV.UK says, in all but very exceptional circumstances.
How long is the longest trial your kitchen or bar has run? Was the person doing real service?
What happens if you underpay?
HMRC enforces the minimum wage. The enforcement manual says "there is no requirement to provide reasons for an inspection". If a compliance officer finds underpayment, they may issue a notice of underpayment. You can appeal within 28 days.
The penalty is up to 200% of the arrears, capped at £20k per worker. It is cut by 50% if you comply with the notice within 14 days. Employers who deliberately fail to pay may face a potentially unlimited fine. The law says to keep minimum wage records for at least 6 years. Not keeping them is a criminal offence.
Employers are named too. On 3 September 2026 the government named around 660 employers. It said around £4 million went back to over 27,000 workers, with penalties totalling £7 million. The release does not split the list by sector. The release says HMRC enforces the minimum wage on behalf of the Fair Work Agency, and that this was the first naming round since the agency was set up in April.
What should you check on a payroll run?
These are the questions the GOV.UK checklist points at. They are yours to answer, in your own records.
- Did the 1 April rates go in for every worker?
- Has anyone moved up an age band since the last run, from under 18 to 18 to 20, or from 20 to 21?
- Is any apprentice aged 19 or over past the first year still on £8.00?
- Is tip or service charge money anywhere in the hourly total?
- Are uniform costs and other deductions taken after the rate is checked?
- Is training, handover and standby time paid?
- Are your records filed for 6 years?
Which AI assistants know the 2026 rate?
Staff and owners can ask an AI assistant as easily as GOV.UK. So we asked. On 12 October 2026 booteek put the same questions to six AI assistant set-ups through their developer interfaces: the 2026 rate for 21 and over, 18 to 20, under 18 and apprentices, each three times. That is 72 rate answers. We checked every answer against the GOV.UK rates page above.
36 of the 72 answers gave the April 2026 rate. 15 gave only an older rate. 21 gave no figure. The split is almost entirely by assistant:
| Assistant (12 answers each) | Gave the April 2026 rate | Older rate only | No figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI, no web search | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| OpenAI, with web search | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Claude Sonnet | 0 | 3 | 9 |
| Gemini, no web search | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| Gemini, with web search | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Perplexity Sonar Pro | 12 | 0 | 0 |
The three that searched the web got it right every time. The three that answered from memory never did. OpenAI without search said the figure was beyond its knowledge. Claude said it had no data for 2026 and, in three answers, quoted the 2025 rate for reference. Gemini without search gave the 2025 rate and said the April 2026 rate had not been announced yet.
We also asked whether tips and service charge count towards the minimum wage in a UK restaurant. 17 of the 18 answers said no, which matches GOV.UK. One OpenAI answer without search said tips paid through payroll can count, which GOV.UK says they cannot.
The limits matter. This is 90 answers from one day, through developer interfaces, which are not always what the ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini apps show. Five short questions cannot tell you how often an assistant is right. They do show that an assistant answering from memory can give a stale pay rate with confidence.
Can booteek check my wage rates?
No. booteek does not run payroll, check wage rates or tell you what to pay. What it does is help with what guests say. And that is where booteek helps: Competitor Check is a one-off report on your Google profile and your reviews, set beside your top local competitors, with the themes guests raise at your venue next to the same themes at theirs.
Does your team check the rate on GOV.UK or in a chat window?
Pay the rate on every hour. Let the tips land on top.
Where do these figures come from?
- booteek AI minimum-wage answer check (booteek, 12 October 2026). 90 answers: 5 questions, each asked 3 times of 6 AI assistant set-ups through their developer interfaces on 12 October 2026. 72 asked for a 2026 rate and 18 asked about tips. Every answer was stored as received. We read the opening of each answer, and a script counted the pound figures in the full text. It shows what these assistants said that day, not how often any of them is right. There is no public page for it yet.
- National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates (GOV.UK, read 12 October 2026). GOV.UK rates
- Calculating the minimum wage (GOV.UK manual, last updated 6 January 2026). What counts, working hours, trials, enforcement and the employer checklist. GOV.UK manual
- LPC advice to government on 2026 minimum wage rates (Low Pay Commission, 26 November 2025). LPC advice
- Accommodation rates (GOV.UK, April 2026). GOV.UK accommodation
- Checking pay (Acas). Acas checking pay
- National Living Wage to increase (Restaurant Online, 26 November 2025). Restaurant Online
- Employers named for not paying the minimum wage (GOV.UK, 3 September 2026). GOV.UK naming release