National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW)
| Age | Rate from 1 April 2025 |
| NLW for workers aged 21 and over | £12.21 |
| NMW for workers aged 18–20 | £10 |
| Young workers rate for workers aged 16–17 | £7.55 |
| Apprentices under 19, or over 19 and in the first year of the apprenticeship | £7.55 |
| Accommodation offset (daily) | £10.66 |
| Accommodation offset (weekly) | £74.62 |
Employers must pay this increase on time, in the next “pay reference period” after the increase has taken effect. This may mean that pay does not increase for the individual until some way into April. The pay reference period is the period within which the pay is calculated. For example, if an employee gets paid monthly on the 15th, the old rate will continue to apply until the next pay reference period, beginning on 16 April. Therefore, the old rate remains in place between 1–15 April, and the new rate from 16 April.
NMW & Salary Sacrifice
We have had a number of queries in relation to salary sacrifice/exchange schemes recently in respect of minimum wage rates. If you are operating such a scheme, it is important that you ensure employees do not drop below the new national minimum wage rates, based on % contributions that they are making to the scheme.
Family Friendly Statutory Payments
Alongside minimum wage increases, there are also other increases that will take effect in April, including family friendly payments, which from 6 April 2025 will increase to £187.18 from £184.03 (this includes maternity, adoption, paternity, shared parental, parental bereavement and for the first time, neonatal care pay)
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) and the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL)
The LEL will increase from £123 to £125 per week. SSP will rise from 6 April 2025 from £116.75 to £118.75.
Statutory Guarantee Pay (SGP)
SGP is the payment made while an employee is laid off (asked not to work) and is a daily rate paid on any days where an employee is laid off, to a maximum of a normal working week, every 13 weeks. The daily rate from 6 April 2025 will be £39.
Key Tribunal Compensation Limits
The key rates are set out below.
| Payments | From 6 April 2025 |
| Limit on a week’s pay for calculating redundancy and unfair dismissal basic award. | £719 |
| Maximum basic award for unfair dismissal and statutory redundancy payment (30 weeks’ pay subject to the limit on a week’s pay). | £21,570 |
| Maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal — subject to a maximum cap of a year’s pay. | £118,223 |
| Maximum compensatory award for failure to allocate and pay tips fairly, for failure to have a written policy on dealing with qualifying tips, gratuities and service charges, or failure to create a record of how they have been dealt with. | £5135 |
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