Living Wage Increase

Living Wage Increase.

The voluntary living wage has increased from £7.85 per hour to £8.25 per hour for the UK. In addition, the voluntary living wage for London has increased from £9.15 per hour to £9.40 per hour.

Confusingly, there are currently three wage bands that are bandied around both in the media and in politics.

• The national minimum wage
• The national living wage
• The voluntary living wage

The national minimum wage is the current legal minimum hourly rate of pay that should be paid to employees. This is currently £6.70 per hour for adults, £5.30 per hour for 18 to 20-year-olds and £3.87 per hour for 16 to 17-year-olds. This will be replaced by the national living wage in April 2016.

The national living wage, announced by George Osborne in his budget speech, starts in April 2016 and will be set at £7.20 per hour for the over 25s.

The voluntary living wage is an hourly rate of pay set by the Living Wage Foundation Group. The campaign by the Living Wage Foundation is designed to promote employers offering a rate of pay that their employees can physically live on. They have actively campaigned for all employers to sign up to the commitment of offering employees a real "living wage". This has been increased to £8.25 per hour.

Comment

We genuinely wish all employers would pay their staff at a reasonable rate of pay although we accept that when an employee is in "training phase" they are unlikely to be adding value to the business or profitability. All of our employees are paid in excess of all of the above minimum and living wages and are even paid at around the London rate for the voluntary living wage despite the fact that our employees are based in Staffordshire. In addition, we make pension contributions that far exceed the government's requirements not just today but the rates of employer pension contributions that will be required within workplace pensions in a few years time. We also offer all longer serving employees at least 25% more holiday entitlement than what is required by law.

Whilst we are not trying to "big up" our firm, we believe that all employers should look after their staff to promote employee loyalty, employee security and a healthy working environment. We believe that both our clients and our employees are our biggest assets and we like to think we do our best to take care of them all.