One of our restaurant clients, Juliet, phoned us to ask “What are the living wage hourly rates?”.
The Living Wage Foundation has announced that its UK Living Wage has risen by 20p per hour from £9.30 to £9.50 per hour. Its London Living Wage has risen by 10p per hour from £10.75 to £10.85 per hour. Over 250,000 UK workers will now receive a pay rise as a result.
The Living Wage Foundation’s real Living Wage is an hourly rate which it calculates independently. This gets updated annually each November. It is calculated according to the basic cost of living in the UK and London. It’s based on a basket of household goods and services. It is entirely separate from the government’s mandatory national living wage (NLW). At the moment this is £8.72 per hour for workers aged 25 and over. The new Living Wage rates apply to workers aged 18 and over.
The Living Wage is voluntary, so employers do not have to pay it. However, many employers have committed to doing so. The Living Wage Foundation offers accreditation to those employers that do pay it. The number of accredited Living Wage employers now stands at nearly 7,000 nationally. Accredited Living Wage employers should implement the rises as soon as possible and within six months, so all affected employees should receive the new rate by 9 May 2021.
