Unions have lodged a claim for a "significant pay rise" for local government staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
UNISON, Unite and GMB are calling for an increase of 10% or £3,000 - whichever is higher - for all staff in 2026-27, as well as a minimum hourly rate of £15 an hour and a two-hour reduction in the working week with no loss of pay.
For social workers, the claim would amount to a 10% increase in pay.
'Years of pay cuts' for council staff
Unveiling the claim, the unions said such a rise was required to take account of "years of effective pay cuts, which have left staff struggling to keep up with rising household bills".
They said that, from 2009-10 to 2025-26, the real-terms value of pay rates for councils covered by the National Joint Council for Local Government Services (NJC) fell by 26%.
This is based on the retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation, which is no longer used as an official statistical measure, with the government employing the consumer prices index (CPI) metric instead. Though the CPI is typically lower than the RPI, pay will still have fallen in real-terms over the past 15 years against the former measure.
In 2025-26, UNISON and GMB settled, reluctantly, for a 3.2% rise for staff, with Unite's disagreement being insufficient to block the increase's implementation. The CPI rate of inflation exceeded 3.2% in every month from April to October 2025, with November's rate matching it.
'Significant wage rise essential'
"Council and school staff have endured years of poor pay settlements while demands on local services have grown," said UNISON's head of local government, Mike Short.
“A significant wage rise is essential, so communities can can continue to receive the support they rely on each day."
For Unite, national officer Clare Keough said accepting the claim would "go a long way to addressing problems with low pay at local authorities, which is also leading to a hiring and retention crisis".
Social work councils' biggest recruitment problem
This includes social work, which has long been cited as the role councils find most difficult to recruit to and retain, though vacancy and turnover rates have fallen in both children's and adults' services in England over the past few years.
In recent years, the employers' side of the NJC have presented the unions with a "full and final" offer over which they have not negotiated.
GMB national officer Kevin Brandstatter urged employers to take a different approach this time, adding: "They must now negotiate, unlike in previous years when the employers made a ‘take it or leave it’ final offer without even the courtesy of an explanation."
The Local Government Association (LGA) said it was holding a number of online briefings during January to shape employers' response to the claim.
Local government funding settlement
This will be limited by the ministers' proposed local government funding settlement for 2026-27, under which the total resource available to English authorities is due to rise by 5.8% (3.5% in real terms) year on year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
Though the IFS described this as a substantial increase, it falls far short of what would be required to finance a 10% pay rise, given the significant pressures on council services. The increase is also reliant on authorities increasing council tax by the maximum permissible amount - 5% in most cases.
Also, the impact of the settlement will also fall unequally on different authorities due to substantial changes to the distribution of funding between councils, designed to take much greater account of relative deprivation.
According to the IFS, councils in the least deprived tenth of the country will receive a 0.8% real-terms rise in core spending power over the next three years, compared with 15.4% for the most deprived tenth.
