BP to scrap paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for forecourt staff
BP is ditching paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for 5,400 workers in its petrol forecourts as it attempts to offset a planned rise in the independent living wage.The company has told workers in its 310 company-run forecourts that it will be changing their benefits in February.Workers at a further 850 BP-branded forecourts run by partners are on different pay deals.BP is an accredited member of the Living Wage Foundation’s fair pay scheme, under which employers commit to pay staff an annually set wage to meet living costs.Hourly pay for BP’s affected workers will rise to a minimum of £13.
45 in February, from £12.60 this year – a 6.7% rise in line with the scheme.However, one worker said the company’s changes to employee benefits would reduced take-home pay by at least 6.25%, wiping out much of the hourly rise.
BP disputed the percentage figure but did not provide its own calculation.At present, most BP workers receive 1.5 times their usual hourly pay for working on bank holidays and are paid for one 20-minute break in a shift of four to six hours or a 30-minute break if their shift is more than six hours.According to the Guardian’s calculations, that would mean that someone working an eight-hour shift, including a 30-minute break, will receive £100.87 under the new pay regime, compared with £100.
80 now,Expressing annoyance at the measures, one source said BP had summoned managers to its Sunbury base to tell them about the change to benefits,The source claimed BP was “framing the announced increase to the real living wage, which they are committed to implementing as part of their role as a real living wage employer, as a new benefit they are going to offer instead [of paid breaks and bank holiday premiums], when in reality they were committed to implementing this increase as they have done every year since they signed up in 2020”,The source suggested the benefits were “written into customer service assistants’ contracts”, and workers could be “encouraged to agree to the changes without fully understanding their rights to disagree and without being offered any compensation or incentive to consent to the changes”,Under UK employment law, workers have the right to one uninterrupted 20-minute rest break during their working day if they work more than six hours a day.
However, the government does not mandate that a worker should be paid during this break.Many retailers, including Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, have cut paid breaks in recent years as a way to offset increases in the legal minimum wage, employers’ national insurance and other labour costs.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionBP confirmed it was making the changes to benefits.A spokesperson said: “We regularly review our pay and benefits to stay fair and competitive, including benchmarking with the rest of the UK retail industry.As a result, early next year we will be adjusting how we structure pay for hourly paid colleagues working in our 310 company-owned retail stores across the UK.
“From February, we will no longer pay for rest breaks and pay premium rates on fewer national bank holidays.However, we will be increasing our base hourly pay and, to help support colleagues, we will bring in this annual increase two months earlier than usual, also in early February 2026.”Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said: “Workers are still suffering a severe cost of living hangover from 14 years of Tory government.This would be the worst possible time for BP to cut benefits and impose a stealth pay reduction.“In the future, the employment rights bill will provide important new protections to prevent employers from imposing contractual changes to workers’ pay.
”
BP to scrap paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for forecourt staff
BP is ditching paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for 5,400 workers in its petrol forecourts as it attempts to offset a planned rise in the independent living wage.The company has told workers in its 310 company-run forecourts that it will be changing their benefits in February. Workers at a further 850 BP-branded forecourts run by partners are on different pay deals.BP is an accredited member of the Living Wage Foundation’s fair pay scheme, under which employers commit to pay staff an annually set wage to meet living costs.Hourly pay for BP’s affected workers will rise to a minimum of £13
Cloudflare outage hits major web services including X, LinkedIn and Zoom – business live
Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].Cloudflare has also reported it has implemented a potential fix to the issue and is monitoring the results.But the outage has affected a number of websites and platforms, with reports of problems accessing LinkedIn, X, Canva – and even the DownDetector site used to monitor online service issues.Last month, an outage at Cloudflare made many websites inaccessible for about three hours
I spent hours listening to Sabrina Carpenter this year. So why do I have a Spotify ‘listening age’ of 86?
Many users of the app were shocked, this week, by this addition to the Spotify Wrapped roundup – especially twentysomethings who were judged to be 100“Age is just a number. So don’t take this personally.” Those words were the first inkling I had that I was about to receive some very bad news.I woke up on Wednesday with a mild hangover after celebrating my 44th birthday. Unfortunately for me, this was the day Spotify released “Spotify Wrapped”, its analysis of (in my case) the 4,863 minutes I had spent listening to music on its platform over the past year
Elon Musk’s X fined €120m by EU in first clash under new digital laws
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has been fined €120m (£105m) after it was found in breach of new EU digital laws, in a ruling likely to put the European Commission on a collision course with the US billionaire and potentially Donald Trump.The breaches, under consideration for two years, included what the EU said was a “deceptive” blue tick verification badge given to users and the lack of transparency of the platform’s advertising.The commission rules require tech companies to provide a public list of advertisers to ensure the company’s structures guard against illegal scams, fake advertisements and coordinated campaigns in the context of political elections.In a third breach, the EU also concluded that X had failed to provide the required access to public data available to researchers, who typically keep tabs on contentious issues such as political content.The ruling by the European Commission brings to a close part of an investigation that started two years ago
McLaren will use team orders in quest for F1 world drivers’ title in Abu Dhabi
Zak Brown has said McLaren will use team orders for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri if required to ensure the team secure the Formula One drivers’ championship in the season finale at Abu Dhabi on Sunday.With Red Bull’s Max Verstappen trailing Norris by 10 points, the Dutchman still has a good shot at taking the title from McLaren’s grasp. Piastri is a further six points back. Having spent all season allowing their drivers to race and attempting to be scrupulously fair to both, Brown announced at the Yas Marina circuit that if circumstances rendered it necessary, they would use orders.“Yes, of course
‘We’re all human’: Joe Root defends England over costly dropped catches on day two
Joe Root has insisted that human error rather than poor preparation lay behind a string of dropped catches during a day of toil in the field for England. Travis Head, Alex Carey – twice – Josh Inglis and Michael Neser all got lifelines as Australia ended day two of the second Test on 378 for six, a lead of 44.“We worked as hard as we could in the lead-up to this, we had five days of prep and we did a huge amount of catching,” Root said. “We made sure we utilised those two [training] sessions under lights well. You can’t replicate that surface, the bounce, the way the nicks come
Skipton in Yorkshire named happiest place to live in Great Britain
‘Tough market conditions’ hit UK half-year retail sales at Frasers Group
Dryrobe wins trademark case against rival waterproof changing coat D-Robe
Budget uncertainty triggers plunge in UK construction activity; Trustpilot shares slump after short-seller claims – as it happened
Rachel Reeves will not be investigated over pre-budget briefing, FCA says
What has gone wrong at Zipcar – and is UK car-sharing market dead?