pay-benchmark

---
name: pay-benchmark
description: Works out what a hospitality job actually pays in your town using ONS earnings data and a published hospitality pay survey, then checks that figure against the legal minimum wage for the age of person you will hire.
---

# What this job really pays in your town, and what you must pay by law

You give this the job title, the town, the hours and the kind of person you expect to hire. You get back a one-page pay sheet with three numbers: the legal floor you cannot go below, the middle of the local market, and the top of a sensible advert range. Every figure on that sheet names where it came from and when it was published, and every figure is marked either STATUTORY or MARKET so you always know which one can get you fined.

## What it does

1. **Write the job down properly before you price it at all.** Record the job title as you would advertise it, the local authority the venue sits in (not the town name, the council name), contracted hours per week, whether it is salaried or paid hourly, the shift pattern including split shifts and weekends, and the youngest age you would realistically hire at. Also record two things owners routinely forget: whether the job comes with any accommodation, and how tips, service charge or a tronc are handled. Those two change the legal answer, not just the market answer. If any of these are unknown, write "unknown" and carry it through to the output rather than guessing a value.

2. **Set the legal floor from the age of the person you will actually hire, not from the job.** GOV.UK gives the rates as £12.71 an hour for 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, £8 for under 18, and £8 for apprentices aged under 19 or aged 19 and over in the first year of their apprenticeship. The same page states plainly: "The rates change on 1 April every year." If you would consider a 19 year old and a 25 year old for the same job, work out both floors and put both on the sheet, because advertising one rate for a job you will fill at two different legal minimums is how a pay dispute starts.

3. **Count every minute the person is under your direction, not just the minutes on the rota.** The legal floor applies to hours actually worked, so a paid trial shift, the fifteen minutes of handover before service, the cash-up after close and compulsory training all count. Divide the total pay for a week by the total hours worked that week and compare that number, not the advertised rate, against the floor from step 2. Where a salaried role is expected to work well beyond its contracted hours, do this calculation at the realistic hours, because a £26,000 salary at 48 real hours a week is a different legal position from £26,000 at 40.

4. **Handle live-in accommodation through the offset, and never as a discount on wages.** The Low Pay Commission's advice to Government for 2026 sets the accommodation offset at £11.10 a day. GOV.UK explains the three cases: where accommodation is free "the offset rate is added to the worker's pay"; where the charge is at or below the offset "it does not have an effect on the worker's pay"; and where you charge more than the offset "the difference is taken off the worker's pay which counts for" minimum wage. Accommodation is the only benefit in kind that may be counted at all, so free meals, staff drinks, uniform and parking count for nothing here. Show the offset as its own line on the sheet.

5. **Keep tips, service charge and tronc completely outside every legal calculation.** Acas states it in one line: "Tips are not included in the minimum wage." So a role earning £11 an hour plus £3 an hour in tips is below the floor for a 21 year old and is unlawful, however good the total looks. You may show expected tips on the sheet as a separate MARKET line to help the candidate compare the job, but it must sit under the statutory block and be labelled as an estimate. Acas also requires employers to "have a written policy about these tips and keep records of them", so note on the sheet whether that policy exists yet.

6. **Pull the local pay level from ONS ASHE Table 7, the place of work by local authority table.** The ONS describes it as "Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by work-based region to local and unitary authority level", most recently released on 23 October 2025 as the 2025 provisional edition. Open the spreadsheet, find your local authority, and read the median hourly pay excluding overtime for all employees. Read the same figure for your region on the same sheet. Divide the local authority figure by the regional figure to get a local factor, for example 0.94 for a town paying six per cent below its region. If the cell for your local authority is blank or marked unreliable in the spreadsheet's own key, do not use it; fall back to the regional figure and record a local factor of 1.00 with a note saying why.

7. **Pull the occupation pay level from ONS ASHE Table 3 and match it to the correct SOC code.** Table 3 is "Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time, by region and two-digit Standard Occupational Classification", also released 23 October 2025. Confirm the occupation code in ONS SOC 2020 Volume 1 before reading any figure; verified hospitality codes there include 9272 kitchen and catering assistants, 9274 bar staff, 1221 hotel and accommodation managers and proprietors, and 6250 bed and breakfast and guest house owners and proprietors. Take the regional median hourly pay excluding overtime for that occupation group, then multiply it by the local factor from step 6. That product is your local market middle.

8. **Cross-check the ONS answer against a published hospitality pay survey, and against the voluntary real Living Wage.** Caterer.com's Salary Benchmarking Report 2026, published 5 February 2026 and built on 865,000 hospitality job adverts plus recruiter and jobseeker surveys, reports that "Hospitality salaries have grown consistently, with the median now reaching £27,258, up from £20,800 five years ago", with a London median of £30,000. ONS data describes April 2025 and the survey describes job adverts, so if the two disagree by more than about ten per cent, say so on the sheet and trust the more recent source for the top of your range. Add the real Living Wage as a separate voluntary marker: the Living Wage Foundation's 2025-26 rates are £13.45 across the UK and £14.80 in London, announced on 22 October 2025 for implementation by 1 May 2026, paid voluntarily by over 16,000 UK businesses and not a legal requirement.

9. **Produce the one-page sheet with three numbers, both units, and a note on what happens next April.** Give the floor (statutory, from step 2), the market middle (from step 7, cross-checked in step 8) and the top of range (the higher of the market middle plus ten per cent, or the real Living Wage). Show each as an hourly figure and an annual figure, converting with the contracted weekly hours times 52, and state the weekly hours used. Close with a dated forward note: the rates change on 1 April every year, and the Low Pay Commission has recommended "reducing NLW eligibility age to 20 in 2027, then to 18 in 2028 or 2029", which would raise the floor for your 18 to 20 year old staff without any change to the job.

## Then it checks

1. Every money figure on the sheet carries the name of its source and the date that source was published or the date it was read.
2. Every money line is marked either STATUTORY or MARKET, and no line carries both marks.
3. The lowest hourly figure anywhere on the sheet is equal to or above the legal rate stated for the age band named on the same sheet.
4. No figure presented as meeting the legal floor includes tips, service charge or tronc money, and any tip estimate appears only in a MARKET line below the statutory block.
5. The sheet names the local authority used for the local factor, and that local authority is the one the venue physically sits in.
6. An hourly figure and an annual figure are shown for the same role, and the annual figure equals the hourly figure times the stated contracted weekly hours times 52, to the nearest pound.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never invent a local figure. If ASHE has no usable cell for your local authority, say the local figure is unavailable and use the regional one with a local factor of 1.00. A made-up town number reads exactly like a real one, gets pasted into a job advert, and is then defended in an argument with a candidate who checked.
- Never blur statutory and market into a single "recommended" number. The market middle is advice you can ignore; the statutory floor is enforced by HMRC with penalties and public naming, and an owner who cannot tell the two apart on the page will eventually go below the floor thinking they are simply being competitive.
- Never smooth over an age band. If the floor differs for an 18 year old and a 21 year old, both floors go on the sheet, because averaging them produces a rate that is lawful for one hire and unlawful for the other.
- Never date-stamp a rate as current without saying when it changes. Minimum wage rates change on 1 April every year and ASHE is published each autumn describing the previous April, so a sheet with no dates on it becomes quietly wrong rather than visibly out of date.
- This sheet touches National Minimum Wage law and HMRC enforcement. It is a working document prepared for your accountant, payroll provider or employment solicitor to check before you advertise or contract anyone. It is not legal or tax advice and must never be presented as though it were.

## Built from
- GOV.UK, "National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates", https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates, read 13 September 2026: the statutory hourly floor by age band (£12.71 for 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, £8 for under 18 and apprentices) and the fact that the rates change on 1 April every year.
- Low Pay Commission and GOV.UK, "LPC advice to Government on 2026 minimum wage rates", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rates-for-2026/lpc-advice-to-government-on-2026-minimum-wage-rates, 26 November 2025: the £11.10 accommodation offset, the two-thirds of median earnings target behind the National Living Wage, and the plan to lower the National Living Wage age threshold to 20 in 2027 and to 18 in 2028 or 2029.
- Office for National Statistics, "Earnings and hours worked, place of work by local authority: ASHE Table 7", https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/placeofworkbylocalauthorityashetable7, released 23 October 2025 (2025 provisional): the local authority level median hourly pay used to build the local factor in step 6.
- Office for National Statistics, "Earnings and hours worked, region by occupation by two-digit SOC: ASHE Table 3", https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/regionbyoccupation2digitsocashetable3, released 23 October 2025 (2025 provisional, with a correction issued 19 December 2025): the regional pay level for the occupation group, and the warning that ONS suppresses cells for quality reasons rather than leaving them wrong.
- Caterer.com, "Caterer.com's Salary Benchmarking Report 2026: The Key Pay Trends Shaping Hospitality Hiring", https://www.caterer.com/recruiter-advice/caterer-coms-salary-benefits-report-2026-the-key-pay-trends-shaping-hospitality-hiring, 5 February 2026: the hospitality median salary of £27,258 and the London median of £30,000, drawn from 865,000 hospitality job adverts, used as the sector cross-check in step 8.

# pay-benchmark

## You are given

A folder from a UK hospitality business containing `job-facts.md`, what Claude recorded: the job title as it would be advertised, the local authority the venue sits in (the council name, not the town name), contracted hours per week, salaried or hourly, the shift pattern including split shifts and weekends, the youngest age the owner would realistically hire at and the oldest band they would also consider, whether the job comes with accommodation and what is charged for it, and how tips, service charge or a tronc are handled. Any of these may read `unknown`.

The folder also holds the downloaded source spreadsheets: ONS ASHE Table 7, place of work by local authority, and ONS ASHE Table 3, region by occupation by two digit SOC, both the 2025 provisional editions released 23 October 2025. Claude supplies `soc-code.md` naming the Standard Occupational Classification code it confirmed for this job in ONS SOC 2020 Volume 1, and `sources.md` listing every figure it is quoting from SKILL.md with that figure's source and date.

You never produce a wage figure that is not read out of one of those spreadsheets or quoted in `sources.md`.

## Produce

Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `pay-sheet.md` - one printable page. A `STATUTORY` block first, then a `MARKET` block below it, then the forward note. The statutory block gives the legal floor for every age band named in `job-facts.md`, one line each. The market block gives the market middle and the top of range. Every line shows an hourly figure and an annual figure, names its source and the date that source was published or read, and carries the word `STATUTORY` or `MARKET` and never both. The forward note states that the rates change on 1 April every year, gives the date this sheet was produced, and carries the Low Pay Commission recommendation on the National Living Wage age threshold exactly as `sources.md` quotes it.
2. `pay-lines.csv` with columns in this order: `Line`, `Basis` (`STATUTORY` or `MARKET`), `Age band`, `Hourly (GBP)`, `Annual (GBP)`, `Contracted weekly hours used`, `Source name`, `Source published or read`, `Cell or table reference`. Every money row must carry a value in the last three columns.
3. `local-factor.md` - the arithmetic shown, not asserted: the local authority median hourly pay excluding overtime read from ASHE Table 7 with the sheet name and cell reference, the regional figure from the same table with its cell reference, the division, and the resulting local factor to two decimal places. If the local authority cell is blank or marked unreliable in the spreadsheet's own key, write which, set the local factor to 1.00, use the regional figure and state the reason in this file and on the pay sheet.
4. `occupation-pay.md` - the SOC code from `soc-code.md`, the regional median hourly pay excluding overtime read from ASHE Table 3 with its sheet name and cell reference, the local factor applied, and the resulting local market middle. Show the multiplication.
5. `cross-check.md` - the ONS answer beside the published hospitality survey figure and the voluntary real Living Wage figure, each quoted exactly as `sources.md` gives them with their publication dates. State the percentage difference between the ONS answer and the survey figure. If it is more than ten per cent, say so in one line and say which source the top of range was taken from and why.
6. `accommodation-and-tips.md` - if the job comes with accommodation, the offset arithmetic as its own set of lines using the offset figure quoted in `sources.md`, showing which of the three cases applies (free accommodation, charge at or below the offset, charge above the offset) and what it does to the pay that counts. If there is no accommodation, one line saying so. Then a separate `MARKET` line for expected tips if `job-facts.md` gives a figure, labelled as an estimate, plus one line recording whether a written tips policy exists yet.
7. `unknowns.md` - a numbered list of every field in `job-facts.md` that reads `unknown`, and what each one prevents being calculated.

## Rules

- Never invent a wage figure, a median, a local number, a percentile or a tips figure. Every money figure must be read from a spreadsheet in the input folder with its cell reference recorded, or quoted from `sources.md` with its source and date. If neither exists, the line is left out and the reason goes in `unknowns.md`.
- Never blur statutory and market into a single recommended number, and never present a market figure as a legal requirement or a legal figure as a suggestion.
- Never average or smooth two age bands. If the floor differs for an 18 year old and a 21 year old, both floors go on the sheet as separate lines.
- Never include tips, service charge or tronc money in any figure marked `STATUTORY`, or in any comparison against the legal floor. Tip estimates appear only as a `MARKET` line below the statutory block.
- Never count a benefit in kind other than accommodation. Free meals, staff drinks, uniform and parking count for nothing.
- Never write a rate without saying when it changes.
- Annual figures are the hourly figure times the stated contracted weekly hours times 52, rounded to the nearest pound, with the weekly hours shown on the same line.
- The lowest hourly figure anywhere on the sheet must be at or above the legal rate stated for the age band on the same line. If it is not, write the failure at the top of `pay-sheet.md` and report it.
- Add no commentary on National Minimum Wage enforcement and make no statement that a rate is compliant. This is a working document prepared for the owner's accountant, payroll provider or employment solicitor to check before anyone is advertised for or contracted.
- Use British English, £ and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes.

## Return

A list of the files written with their absolute paths, the local authority used and whether its ASHE cell was usable, the local factor, the SOC code and the regional occupation figure with its cell reference, the market middle and the top of range, the percentage difference at the cross-check, the number of money lines and how many carry a cell or source reference, and every item in `unknowns.md`.