The penalties given out for national minimum wage (NMW) and national living wage (NLW) offences has dropped by £4.5m from the year before which saw 992 penalties totalling £18.5m.

HMRC stated that ‘they remain high compared to historic levels despite the difficulties HMRC faced when enforcing throughout this financial year’.

Documents published by HRMC show that the arrears of underpayment sat at £16.7m for 2020-21 which is down from £20.8m in 2019-20.

The arrears were for 228,000 non-compliance cases which were identified with 193,000 for 23 years old and over. There were 30,000 identified for 21-22 years old and 18-20 years old, 2,000 for 16-17 years old, and 3,000 for apprentices.