Unpaid gaps
Gaps of up to 60 minutes between care visits count as legal, payable working time. Yet 72% of 503 current and former homecare workers we asked in 2025 said they were only paid for the time they spend at care visits. Our analysis of homecare runs from the current financial year found the average contracted rate of pay was £13.23, but that once unpaid gaps were taken into account, the average true hourly rate of pay dropped to just £9.74. That's well below the legal National Minimum Wage of £12.21.
Unpaid gaps obscure the realities of low pay in homecare from view...
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Masking illegal underpayment of the National Minimum Wage by unscrupulous employers
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Locking Health & Care Worker Visa holders who must meet a minimum salary threshold into exploitative working hours
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Misleading policy-makers and job seekers
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Driving the highest turnover rate of any sector
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Undermining efforts to improve to the basic hourly rate of pay
Members of Homecare Voices call for:
Shift-based pay
Whereby homecare workers are paid from the start of the first care visit to the end of the last. Gaps can be used to pay additional social visits or undertake extra tasks as appropriate. Shift-based pay is already the norm in other countries, and is being trialled in areas of the UK.
True hourly pay
Find out your true hourly rate of pay for a homecare run once unpaid travel and waiting time is taken into account 👀 and learn what to do next.
Homecare Voices has developed a range of free True Hourly Pay resources to help homecare workers understand the impact of unpaid travel and waiting time on their hourly rate of pay.
Other aspects of unpaid working time
Visits that are too short
A common topic of conversation among members of Homecare Voices is how to respond when you are not given enough time to spend with the people you visit. There is usually no flexibility in the scheduled visit times, despite the fact that as humans, we all have good days and slow days. When supporting someone who is living with a health condition like Parkinsons or dementia, this variability often becomes even more pronounced. All those extra five or ten minutes add up. It can takes months before a visit extension is agreed. In the meantime, we go unpaid, and there's no such thing as back-pay.
Ad-hoc extras
Homecare workers are often expected to:
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Liaise with other professionals like District Nurses, Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, GPs, 111
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Collect prescriptions
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Buy groceries
These time-consuming extras are generally not factored into scheduled visit times, and often cause us to unavoidably ‘run over’. If somebody needs urgent medical assistance, we must wait with them until a registered professional indicates it is safe for us to leave.
The majority of homecare agencies have now ‘gone digital’, meaning most homecare workers must now clock in and out of each care visit using an app on their phone. Unfortunately, members of Homecare Voices have reported that when clock in / out times show they spent less time than scheduled at a care visit, their pay is reduced accordingly, but when they spend additional time, they are not paid the extra. It would appear that the rollout of time-tracking technology in domiciliary care is being used in a one-sided fashion.
Trips to the office
Homecare workers visit their employer's office on a regular basis to drop off completed paperwork, collect new paperwork and pick up PPE. These activities form an essential part of our role. Yet since many of us are only only paid for the time we spend face-to-face with the people we support (aka for contact-time only), these frequent visits are done in our own time, unpaid.
Training
ACAS clearly states that “if you earn the minimum wage or close to it, your employer should pay you for time spent on mandatory training. This is to make sure your pay does not go below the minimum wage when you're doing mandatory training”.
Yet many members of our community report not being paid for training their employer tells them is mandatory. You should be paid for the time it takes you to complete mandatory training regardless of whether it takes place online or in person.