Trade unions have fired the opening salvo in next year's pay talks by demanding town hall employers pay their lowest earning staff the Living Wage as a minimum.

Calls to boost wages by a minimum of £1 per hour for the estimated half a million staff in councils who currently earn less than the Living Wage follow yesterday's announcement of a new Living Wage rate - of £7.65 across the country and £8.80 in London.

Last year the unions grudgingly accepted the 1% pay offer from 2013/14 National Joint Council for Local Government Services (NJC) as the best result to break the three-year pay freeze.

‘We are calling for fair pay for local government workers,' said Unite national officer, Fiona Farmer. ‘The claim for £1 an hour will raise the pay of 500,000 of the every lowest paid to the Living Wage.'

GMB national secretary, Brian Strutton, said council staff are ‘demanding that they no longer be used as austerity cannon fodder'. 

‘The claim we are lodging today is just the start of our campaign to win a fair deal for council staff,' he said.

Heather Wakefield, Unison's head of local government, said she would meet today with LG Employers to formally lodge a pay claim seeking a minimum increase of £1 per hour, ahead of next year's National Joint Council 2014/15 pay talks.

‘The gap between council bottom pay rate and Living Wage risen to £1.25. That's what UNISON will be seeking from the employers,' she said.

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: ‘We have received the claim and will consider it in the usual way.'