THE Government has named and shamed almost 200 employers for failing to pay their workers the basic wage.

Among those named in the region were the Black Swan Hotel in Helmsley, near York, Mr Moo’s Family Butchers in Billingham, Teesside, the Purple Pig restaurant in Middlesbrough and Oldfields Noted Eating House, in Durham.

Nationally, two football clubs – Brighton and Hove Albion and Blackpool FC – were publicly named for not paying the legal minimum rate, each to one worker.

In the North-East, Sycamore Care Centre in Sunderland was shamed for owing £10,212.05 to 98 workers – the highest amount in the region – followed by Mr Moo’s, which owed £7,371.25 to four workers.

In a statement Sycamore Care Centre said: "When it was identified to us that collectively we were paying below the minimum wage, the outstanding money was immediately repaid to staff and we apologised.

"We have always paid our staff the correct hourly rate of pay against the hours they work through payroll, the shortfall was because we did not deduct the uniform or the administrative part of the DBS check and when this was calculated in their overall pay it put them slightly under the minimum wage band.

"Otherwise we have demonstrated that we pay our valued staff correctly and in some cases above the hourly rate."

Luxury boutique hotel the Black Swan owed ten workers £5,836.66, while Prakas Kitto, trading as Kash’s Off Licence in Spennymoor, County Durham, owed £3,445.88 to one worker.

General Manager of The Black Swan Hotel Paul O’Hanlon said: "The issue of paying less than the minimum wage applied to ten of our employees, this arose unintentionally due to a lack of knowledge on the amount charged for live-in accommodation to those employees, to whom this arrangement applied.

"There is a ‘fixed ceiling’ on the amount of rent live-in employees can be charged per week, and we had unwittingly charged slightly over this amount. This meant that ten employees received a ‘nett’ wage, i.e. after deduction of their live-in expenses, of just under the national minimum wage.

"As soon as this error was revealed to us we took immediate action to remedy the problem."

Ro-Ro Restaurants, trading as Oldfields Eating House, had to pay one worker £2,463.98 to three workers; Elizabeth Richardson, trading as Poppies in Durham, owed £1,772.13 to 23 workers, and Lorna Bainbridge, trading as Passion 4 Hair and Beauty in Stockton, owed £997.45 to two workers.

Mrs Richardson, who has run her cleaning business, Poppies, for 33 years, said: “I have never had a compliance issue before. This was to do with a technical issue – travelling time between jobs – and it has all been resolved since February.

“Everybody has been reimbursed.”

Others on the list included Lifestyle Limited, in Richmond, which owed £775.12, the Purple Pig, in Middlesbrough, which owed £226 and Dimples Riverside Day Nursery, also in Middlesbrough, which owed £195.23 to five of its staff.

The Government’s list of employers was the biggest of its kind, with more than £466,000 owed in arrears by employers ranging from football clubs, hotels and care homes to hairdressers and a gun club.

Business minister Margot James said: “We’ll continue to crack down on those who ignore the law, including by naming and shaming them.”

The living wage for workers aged 25 and over was introduced in April, giving a pay rise of more than £900 a year for someone previously working full time on the national minimum wage. The national minimum wage still applies to workers under 25.

There have been ten rounds of “naming and shaming” since 2013, with £3.5 million arrears recovered for 12,908 workers from almost 700 employers.