Hours worked beyond the standard working week, often paid at a premium rate.
Overtime is time worked beyond an employee's contracted hours. In the UK there is no statutory overtime premium: employers do not have to pay workers for overtime at all. Time-and-a-half and double time are contractual conventions rather than legal entitlements — the binding constraints are that average pay for the total hours worked must not fall below the National Minimum Wage, and that average weekly hours are capped.
GOV.UK is unambiguous on the point: employers do not have to pay workers for overtime. There is no statutory overtime premium in the UK, no legally mandated multiplier, and no number of hours after which a higher rate switches on by force of law. Whether extra hours are paid at all, and at what rate, is whatever the contract says.
Time-and-a-half and double time are so widespread that people assume they are law. They are convention. The practical consequence runs both ways: a policy drafted from a template written for a jurisdiction that does mandate a premium can create a contractual entitlement the organisation never intended, and contractual terms are far harder to withdraw than discretionary practice. The mirror-image error is assuming that because no premium is owed, unpaid overtime carries no legal exposure. Two limits apply regardless of what the contract says about pay.
The first is the National Minimum Wage floor: average pay for the total hours worked must not fall below the National Minimum Wage. Because the test runs on average pay across total hours, every unpaid extra hour dilutes the effective rate. A contract may be silent on overtime pay; it cannot produce an average that lands under the floor. Check the current rate for the worker's age band against your own figures rather than a rate remembered from a previous year.
The second is the working time limit: you cannot work more than 48 hours a week on average, normally averaged over 17 weeks. Because it is an average, one 60-hour week is not in itself a breach, but a run of them is. A worker may opt out of the 48-hour week, and here sits the distinction most often got wrong: that opt-out concerns the hours limit. It does not touch the pay floor, which continues to apply to whatever hours are actually worked.
| Minimum wage floor | 48-hour limit | |
|---|---|---|
| What it limits | Average pay for the total hours worked | Average weekly hours worked |
| The rule | Must not fall below the National Minimum Wage | No more than 48 hours a week on average, normally averaged over 17 weeks |
| Opt-out | Not what the opt-out covers | A worker may opt out of the 48-hour week |
| Under-18s | — | Cannot work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week |
| Authority | Overtime: your rights — GOV.UK | Maximum weekly working hours — GOV.UK |
Take a worker on a basic rate of £12.00 an hour, contracted to 37.5 hours, whose contract provides time-and-a-half beyond that. In a week where they work 43.5 hours: 37.5 × £12.00 = £450 basic, plus 6 × £18.00 = £108 overtime, so £558 in total, an average of £12.83 across the 43.5 hours. That premium exists because the contract created it, not because the law required it.
Now the case that catches employers out. A salaried manager on £500 a week for a contracted 40 hours has a headline rate of £12.50 an hour. Work 50 hours and nothing changes on the payslip, but £500 ÷ 50 = £10.00. The £12.50 is the figure in the offer letter and in every internal cost report; the £10.00 is the figure the minimum wage test looks at. Whether it passes depends on the current rate for that worker's age band, which is exactly why it has to be recalculated from recorded hours rather than inferred from the salary.
Contractual overtime pay = overtime hours × basic hourly rate × the multiplier set out in the contract. Minimum wage check = total pay for the period ÷ total hours actually worked in that period.
Both binding limits are computed from hours actually worked, not hours claimed for payment. An organisation that pays no premium usually records only the overtime somebody submitted a claim for, which means the hours that create the exposure — unpaid extra time on salaried contracts — are precisely the hours that never enter the system. A 17-week average cannot be evidenced from a record that only sees paid hours, and neither can the pay floor.
The working minimum is therefore: capture actual start and finish times for salaried staff too, not only for those who claim; keep a per-worker record of who has opted out of the 48-hour week, since the opt-out attaches to the individual; and run the pay-divided-by-hours check as a routine payroll exception rather than after somebody complains. Rotas for under-18s need their own rules, because daily and weekly caps cannot be smoothed by an averaging period.
No. There is no statutory overtime premium in the UK — GOV.UK states that employers do not have to pay workers for overtime, and no law sets a multiplier such as time-and-a-half. Where an enhanced rate applies, it comes from the employment contract, which makes it a contractual entitlement rather than a legal minimum. The legal constraints sit elsewhere: average pay for the total hours worked must not fall below the National Minimum Wage, and average weekly working hours are capped at 48, normally averaged over 17 weeks.
The cap is an average rather than a ceiling on any single week: you cannot work more than 48 hours a week on average, normally averaged over 17 weeks, so a long week can be offset by shorter ones within the reference period. A worker may also opt out of the 48-hour week. Workers under 18 are treated separately and cannot work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, and those are daily and weekly limits rather than an average.
It can. The test is that average pay for the total hours worked must not fall below the National Minimum Wage, so unpaid extra hours pull the effective hourly rate down. A salaried worker paid £500 for a contracted 40-hour week is on £12.50 an hour on paper, but £10.00 if they actually work 50 hours. Whether that is a breach depends on the current National Minimum Wage rate for their age band, so the check has to be run from recorded hours against the rate in force — never from contracted hours.
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