Seventeen care workers are alleging failure to be paid the minimum wage in the sector's biggest ever legal claim.

Payslips appear to show contractor Sevacare had some staff in Haringey, north London, on a rate of £3.27 an hour - less than half the then minimum. Their union Unison says an employment tribunal will examine some of the worst breaches of pay rules it has ever seen.
Sevacare says it pays above minimum wage but that the workers feel hours it deemed off-duty should also be covered. The company has contracts with a number of local authorities across England, providing care and support to 9,600 people each week, but no longer has a contract with Haringey.

'A prison'

The workers involved in the case - sixteen women and one man - were employed by Sevacare to look after people in the borough over many years up to 2016. According to Unison, the £3.27 rate was being paid to a number of women who acted as "live-in" care workers at the time the national minimum was £7.20 an hour. It says they stayed, for seven days at a time, in the home of an elderly woman with severe dementia. The carers say they were on duty 24 hours a day - they slept on a bed in the same room as the woman, and would often have to tend to her needs through the night.....Read more here