The Home Office has issued fines worth almost £2.5m to dozens of hand car washes in just three months after catching the businesses employing people with no right to work in the UK.
Figures released for the first quarter of 2025 reveal officials issued penalties totalling £18.8 million after raiding 321 businesses between January and March. Hand car washes and valeting centres made up 43 of those raids, with car-wash bosses fined a total of £2,465,000. This means that of all the immigration raids carried out by the Home Office in Q1 2025, some 13% occurred at valeting firms.
Car wash raids took place across the UK, with premises in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland visited. Other types of businesses featuring prominently in the data include restaurants and take-aways, convenience stores, nail salons, beauticians, and barbers.
London features most prominently in the tables, with a total of 53 raids carried out in the capital, but businesses were caught employing people with no right to work in the UK in all corners of the isles, including capitals Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, as well as smaller locales such as Wadebridge in Cornwall (population: 8,000), Thurso in Caithness (pop:7,000), and Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, population 5,000.
While many of what the Home Office terms ‘liable parties’ were local businesses with small corporate footprints, some bigger names appear in the documents. Yodel is listed against one entry under the ‘business name where illegal workers encountered’ column in the figures, while IMO Car Wash features twice.
Civil penalties for employing illegal workers stand at up to £45,000 per staff member for a first offence, rising to £60,000 for a second. The highest penalty issued in Q1 2025 saw a construction firm in Herefordshire fined £320,000. A hand car wash in London was fined £135,000, while ones in Aberdare, Wales, and Glasgow both received £120,000 tickets. Overall penalties for Q1 2025 were down slightly compared to Q3 2024, when fines worth £2.9m were issued.
Ministers are keen to be seen to be cracking down on immigration offences, with a 51% rise in arrests between July 2024 and May this year. Dame Angela Eagle, who is responsible for border security and asylum, has previously said that “for too long, employers have been able to take on and exploit migrants, with people allowed to arrive and work here illegally.”
