Award-winning Sheffield restaurants Joro and The Milestone, and bookseller Waterstones broke minimum wage laws

The Department for Business yesterday published a list of 208 employers it says underpaid staff "whether it was intentional or not”.

Four Sheffield businesses are among them, including two from Sheffield’s Kelham Island district directed by the same group.

All the Sheffield infringements date back to between 2016 and 2017.

One of the restaurants was The Milestone, an award-winning gastropub that has not opened since the first lockdown in March 2020 and went up for sale in October.

The DfB says the restaurant failed to pay three members of staff a total of £4,278.10 between 2016 and 2017.

The Milestone, on Green Lane, and directed by Matthew and Dina Bigland of the Milestone Group, previously featured on Channel 4’s Ramsay’s Best Restaurant in 2010.

Milestone did not reply to a request for comment.

Another restaurant on the list, which also list the Biglands as directors, is Joro in Shalesmoor.

The Michelin-awarded Bib Gourmand holder was rapped for failing to pay £3,859.25 to three workers in mid 2017.

The restaurant was taken over by Luke French and his wife Stacey Sherwood-French in 2016.

A spokesperson for Joro said: “The oversight took place during the restaurant’s first year of trading, in 2017, and was swiftly rectified with measures put in place to ensure the same mistake never happened again.”

City centre Cantonese restaurant Bobo Express, on Furnival Gate, failed to pay one worker £1,731.52 in late 2016. The Star was unable to reach the restaurant for comment.

Home care provider Juventa 4 Care Ltd failed to pay 20 workers an average of £61.31 between May 2017 and July 2018, amounting to £1,226.27.

Waterstones, which has branches in Sheffield, was also on the list, with the Government saying it failed to pay £8,689.54 to 58 workers between 2016 and 2018.

The Government said the 208 businesses underpaid staff by way of deductions such as workers paying to comply with dress codes, unpaid working time such as for mandatory training, not paying the right rate for apprentices and not increasing minimum wage in line with national rises.

The report claimed businesses ‘should know better than to short-change hard-working employees, regardless of whether it was intentional or not’.