Employers who provide accommodation for use when staff are not working

The NMW regulations also include special rules to apply when hourly-paid workers are given sleeping accommodation with their job but when, unlike the night watchman and other examples described above, they are not contractually obliged to “work” when using the accommodation.

Regulation 15(1A) says that an hourly-paid worker who “by arrangement sleeps at or near a place of work” and is “provided with suitable facilities for sleeping”, will only be engaged in working time for the purposes of the NMW when “awake for the purpose of working”.

In other words, workers who are provided with sleeping facilities by the employer but who are basically free to come and go from those facilities as they please are only entitled to the NMW for the hours spent using those facilities when they are both awake and working (i.e. at the employer’s disposal).