Seaton & Colyton MATTERS

Care homes’ hollow boasts over Living Wage

Posted on January 13, 2016 Updated on January 13, 2016

View from Seaton reports today my attempt in December to persuade Seaton Town Council to make Seaton a ‘Living Wage Town’, promoting the Living Wage of £8.25 an hour.

However the same issue contains a full-page advert proclaiming ‘Cannon Care Homes achieve another first!’ The owners of The Check House (right) and Thornfield boast:

‘On April 1st the new Living Wage of £7.20 is being introduced country wide for over 25’s. At Cannon Care Homes our Minimum Wage for over 25’s all be £7.25 from March 1st!’

To understand this, you need to know that George Osborne is rebranding the official Minimum Wage as ‘the National Living Wage’, increasing it to £7.20 per hour from April 1st.

So Cannon will be paying their employees 5p per hour (yes a whole 5p!) more than the legal minimum and introducing this one month (yes a whole month!) before they are legally bound to.

The Living Wage which I support is independently researched as the minimum amount which, on average, employees need to live on and should apply to all workers over 18. The Government’s rebranded Minimum Wage is still over £1 an hour below this level, and does not apply to workers aged 18 to 25.

The care home sector is very important in Seaton. Which care home employer will be the first to pay the real Living Wage to all its employees?