Entry level wages will increase from £9.50 to £10.10 an hour outside of London and £10.85 to £11.30 within the M25 from March 2022. Lidl employees will be able to earn up to £11.40 and £12.25 an hour respectively, depending on their length of service

Lidl says the move, which represents a pay rise of more than 6% for some Lidl workers, will directly benefit more than 21,000 people and more than 80% of its workforce across the UK.

The supermarket said it had long been committed to increasing wages in line with the cost of living, with a combined investment of more than £50m into hourly wages over the past five years. It said the latest rise recognises the hard work and dedication of frontline colleagues during the past 18 months of the pandemic.

As a result of the increase, Lidl employees will benefit from 60p per hour more than the National Living Wage for those aged over 23.

Christian Härtnagel, chief executive officer at Lidl GB, said: “At Lidl, our frontline colleagues are the backbone of our business. They have worked tirelessly over the past 18 months of the Covid-19 crisis and are integral to our future success.

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“We have ambitious plans to grow our business across Great Britain, and to do that we need to ensure we attract and look after the best talent at every level of our business. This year we feel incredibly lucky to be in a position as a business to go even further by making this significant investment in our incredible workforce, which will make us the best paying supermarket in the UK.”

The wage increase, which will come into effect from March 2022, forms part of Lidl’s wider plans to invest £1.3bn in the UK in 2021 and 2022, alongside a 1,000 stores target by the end of 2023.