Leicester’s garment district, which is home to more than 1,000 factories, has received fewer than 60 health and safety inspections and only 28 fire inspections since October 2017 despite long-held concerns about working conditions. The city’s small clothing manufacturers, which employ as many as 10,000 people, were also the subject of just 36 HMRC investigations into payment of the national minimum wage between 2017 and March 2020, according to a freedom of information request filed by the Guardian. Not only is the rate of inspections low. HMRC has issued penalties to fewer than 10 textile firms that failed to pay the minimum wage since 2017 and claimed just over £100,000 in arrears relating to 143 workers. The figures highlight the low rate of regulatory oversight of factories in Leicester despite the creation of a multi-agency group in October 2017 to try to tackle their problems. The group was established after a 2015 report by the Ethical Trade Initiative, made up of retailers, trade unions and pressure groups, flagged illegally low pay and poor conditions. The Labour MP for Leicester East, Claudia Webbe, said the numbers were “absolutely shocking and devastating”. “I think it is shameful that successive governments have neglected to act despite long standing evidence of employer misconduct in the Leicester garment industry,” she said. She blamed austerity budget cuts at the regulatory bodies, local authorities and the fire service over the last decade, which she said reduced their ability to monitor workplace conditions. Some buildings, including the former Imperial Typewriter works, which houses as many as 40 small factories, have only been inspected once. There have been nine callouts to factory fires in garment factories in the main LE5 textile district since 2017, including a large blaze that triggered the evacuation of nearby premises in 2018. Other major fires have been recorded at garment factories in nearby districts. Of 58 inspections the Health and Safety Executive has carried out since October 2017, 27 have taken place since 1 April this year, when the coronavirus pandemic renewed attention on Leicester’s garment industry. The HSE has not brought any cases against textile firms in the country as a whole since 2017. The Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, Andrew Bridgen, raised the problems in Leicester’s garment factories in parliament in January, when he said conditions were a national shame and described the area as “the wild west”. “If you withdraw regulatory oversight and the police from everything, organised crime is going to move in,” he said. There are only four frontline HSE inspectors in Leicester and three trainees, though the team had managed to visit 45 textile and clothing businesses since March. Bridgen said: “We need a body that has got the power to investigate labour abuses and the authority to utilise other agencies like HMRC. They have all been working in silos.” The government completed a consultation on creating a single labour market enforcement body in October last year but has yet to act. A spokesman said: “We have committed to establishing a single enforcement body for employment rights to provide a clearer route for workers to raise a complaint and get support, while providing a consistent approach to enforcement.” HSE said it was “committed to working in partnership with other enforcement bodies, both strategically and at an operational level to share intelligence where necessary, and take action to improve the working lives of those within the textile and other industries”. It said there was “nothing to indicate significant health and safety issues” following inspections in 2018, 2019 and early 2020. HMRC said: “We will continue to target employers who flout the rules, ensuring workers receive the wages they are legally entitled to.” It said workers could report abuse of the national minimum wage system online. A Leicestershire fire and rescue service spokesperson said inspections were carried out as part of its risk-based programme, but that it had suspending the programme after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London “in order to fully focus on residential high-rise buildings across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland”. It said this “had an impact on the number of inspections we completed in other premises, such as factories”. The workers’ rights group Labour Behind the Label said the low inspection rate in Leicester highlighted “lackadaisical and hands-off approach to labour market enforcement” under the current and previous governments. A spokesperson for the group, Dominique Muller, said: “This has resulted in a situation where workers are exploited every day, where levels of wage theft reach the millions each week and where brands can continue squeezing suppliers on prices again and again.”