The Retreat's operator underpaid two workers £10,960.48, the government's new naming list shows. A 55-year-old Reading cleaning firm was named too.

The company that runs The Retreat, the backstreet real ale pub on St John’s Street, has been named by the government for failing to pay two of its workers the minimum wage. The shortfall was £10,960.48, an average of £5,480.24 each.

It is the largest of three Reading-area entries in Round 24 of the National Minimum Wage naming scheme, published by the Department for Business and Trade on 3 September. The list runs to 658 employers across the UK.

The three employers named

Taken from the Round 24 naming publication spreadsheet, which gives one row per employer:

  • The Retreat Pub Co Limited, trading as The Retreat, RG1, listed under Reading and the Reading Central constituency. £10,960.48 owed to 2 workers. Arrears period 1 April 2021 to 27 May 2023. Sector: hospitality.
  • Adam & Eve Hair 2014 Limited, trading as Adam and Eve Salon Tilehurst, RG31. £3,601.13 owed to 1 worker. Arrears period 1 July 2021 to 28 December 2022. Sector: hair and beauty.
  • Thames Valley Cleaning Limited, RG30, listed under Reading and the Reading Central constituency. £574.48 owed to 48 workers, an average of £11.97 each. Arrears period 21 September 2020 to 28 April 2024. Sector: cleaning and maintenance.

One point of geography. The spreadsheet places the Tilehurst salon in West Berkshire, not Reading borough, and in the Reading West and Mid Berkshire constituency. Tilehurst straddles the boundary, and the RG31 outcode falls on both sides of it.

Minimum wage arrears at three Reading-area employers, Round 24 Horizontal bar chart. The Retreat Pub Co Limited £10,960.48 owed to 2 workers. Adam and Eve Hair 2014 Limited £3,601.13 owed to 1 worker. Thames Valley Cleaning Limited £574.48 owed to 48 workers. Minimum wage arrears, Reading-area employers named in Round 24 Arrears repaid to workers. This is not a fine: penalties are not published per employer. The Retreat Pub Co Adam & Eve Hair 2014 Thames Valley Cleaning £10,960.48 £3,601.13 £574.48 2 workers, £5,480.24 each 1 worker, £3,601.13 48 workers, £11.97 each Source: Department for Business and Trade, Round 24 Naming Publication Spreadsheet, 3 September 2026 Graphic by Reading Daily

What the list does and does not say

Three caveats matter, and the government prints two of them itself.

The first is location. The spreadsheet’s own note, repeated in the Round 24 educational bulletin, says geography comes from the postcode of the employer’s trading address, and that “in some cases, this may not be where the minimum wage underpayment occurred.”

The second is money. The published figure is arrears, meaning pay that was owed and has been repaid to workers. It is not a fine. Penalties are issued separately and are not published for individual employers. Across the whole round, the department says penalties totalled £7 million against roughly £4 million of arrears returned to more than 27,000 workers.

The third is time. These are historic cases. The Retreat’s arrears period ended in May 2023, the salon’s in December 2022 and the cleaning company’s in April 2024. Naming happens long after the investigation.

The Retreat, and who runs it

The Retreat is one of Reading’s better known pubs, a mid-terrace Victorian beer house that the pub’s own history page dates to 1875. That page records that three people bought the tenancy in August 2019 “with the specific intent of keeping the traditions going”.

The Retreat Pub Co Limited was incorporated on 19 August 2019, the same month, with those same three people as its founding directors. Companies House lists the company as active, with a registered office at Tudor House, Carters Hill, Arborfield, and its nature of business as public houses and bars. Its confirmation statement is currently overdue.

The naming spreadsheet gives only a trading name and a partial postcode, so the pub itself is not named to a street. The Food Standards Agency register lists one pub called The Retreat in the RG1 postcode area, at 8 St John’s Street. That register gives the pub a food hygiene rating of five, the top score, issued on 16 July 2025. We went through Reading’s hygiene register in full today.

This report sets out what the government’s record states and nothing beyond it. Any named employer is entitled to put its side of the case, and we will publish a response in full.

The cleaning firm with 48 workers

Thames Valley Cleaning Limited is the oldest business on the Reading list by a distance. Companies House shows it was incorporated on 13 September 1971, which makes it 55 this month, and it still trades from Unit 5a Bridgewater Close in RG30.

Its entry is the opposite shape to the pub’s: the smallest sum in the borough spread across the most people. £574.48 divided between 48 workers works out at £11.97 each over an arrears period of more than three and a half years. That pattern usually points to a payroll or rounding problem rather than a deliberate one, though the spreadsheet does not record a reason for any individual employer.

Why employers get named

The bulletin does publish reasons for the round as a whole. Some employers had more than one, so the counts add to more than 658:

  • 257 employers made deductions or reductions that took pay below the minimum wage
  • 221 failed to pay workers correctly for their working time
  • 104 failed to pay the uprated rate after it rose
  • 103 applied the apprentice rate incorrectly
  • 71 got the accommodation offset wrong
  • 108 fell into an “other” category, including flat-rate pay that worked out below the hourly minimum

The deductions category is broader than most people expect. The bulletin lists uniform, parking permits, training costs, salary sacrifice schemes, till shortages and workers buying clothes to meet a dress code.

This was also the first naming round since the Fair Work Agency was set up in April under the Employment Rights Act. HMRC still does the enforcement work on its behalf.

What it means for you

If you work in Reading and think you have been underpaid, the checks are free and you do not need your employer’s agreement to make them.

  • The rates from April 2026 are £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, and £8 for under 18s and apprentices.
  • Check your own pay at gov.uk/checkyourpay, or complain through the Acas pay and work rights helpline.
  • Unpaid time counts. Time spent on mandatory training, trial shifts, cashing up after a shift or travelling between jobs is working time.
  • If a deduction from your wages takes your hourly rate below the minimum, that is a breach even if you agreed to it.

Since the naming scheme began in 2011, the department says more than £100 million in penalties has been issued to over 5,200 employers, returning more than £66 million to 650,000 workers.

More from Reading’s public records: planning applications, council tax bands and what is closed on the roads this week.

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