Al Kingsley celebrates real Living Wage employers across Peterborough

Al Kingsley celebrates real Living Wage employers across Peterborough

[Photo: Sarah Buttigieg, Director of Green Energy Switch; Al Kingsley, Chair of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and Stuart Dawks, Chief Executive Officer at PECT]

To mark Real Living Wage week, Al Kingsley, Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Business Board, has visited organisations across Peterborough committed to paying their staff the Real Living Wage.

Al visited PECT, a charity helping to protect and enhance the environment in Peterborough and beyond, HELP a local refugee charity who empower individuals to improve their lives in the UK and Green Energy Switch, a green energy supplier.

The real Living Wage is £12.60 across UK and £13.85 in London, this compares to the legal wage of £8.60 for over 18’s and £11.44 for over 21’s.

The real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate based on the cost of living.  It is voluntarily paid by over 15,000 businesses who want to ensure their staff are paid a wage that meets their everyday needs.

Over 460,000 employees have received a pay rise because of the Living Wage campaign.  A broad range of employers are committed to paying the real Living Wage, including large employers such as Nationwide, Google, LUSH, Everton FC and Chelsea FC.

Businesses report that paying the real living wage has led to greater morale and therefore productivity from staff as well as better staff retention and a higher calibre of staff applying for roles.

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority signed up to paying its staff the real living wage last year and has recently celebrated a one-year anniversary of being a living wage employer.

Real Living Wage week, which this year takes place from 4^th-10^th November, seeks to highlight employers throughout the UK who have taken the step of paying their staff a wage above the minimum legal requirement.

Al Kingsley, Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Business Board and CEO of Net Support, an international software company, said:

“Investing in staff moral and productivity is a key part of what makes a business tick and one of the ways you can do that is by providing a decent wage.

“I’m pleased to be able to shine a light on this important issue and meet with some key organisations across Peterborough who are signed up to pay the only wage based on the cost of living: the real living wage.”

Director of Green Energy Switch Sarah Buttigieg said:  

“Signing up to the real living wage has been really beneficial for our company, we retain staff really well and I think that’s really crucial not to have to be recruiting all the time, and we have a happy team which is something that is so important.”

Stuart Dawks, Chief Executive Officer at PECT said:

“We’ve been a real living wage employer for over ten years now, it’s the right thing to do and it ties in with the entire ethos of our business: we want to treat our staff fairly.  We use it as a benchmark for the lowest of our salaries, as a business we’ve seen great results in terms of both staff retention and recruitment, which really helps.”

Mark Murray, Co-founder and Office Manager at HELP said:

“It helps us retain staff and makes them feel more valued and the financial gain to that as an organisation is worth the outlay.  To hold onto staff with their experience is far more important than the small monetary gain there is to be had in not paying it.

The Living Wage rates for 2024-25 were announced on the 23rd October 2024. Employers then have 6 months to implement them by May 1st 2025.