AFG supports team with £6.5m pay boost to help with cost of living

With the recognition in the Spring Statement that this year will continue to be a challenging one for many, we have announced a five per cent rise for our frontline colleagues to match Real Living Wage and a four per cent rise for other colleagues to help with the cost of living.

AFG’s Board of Trustees have committed £5.9m to improve pay for our highly valued frontline colleagues to the Real Living Wage and a further £600,000 to ensure a cost of living rise for colleagues in other roles. This is our largest investment yet and follows three successive years of real terms pay rises.

The pay rise will impact 1,800 of our colleagues working across the North West in Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

Ian Pritchard, Chief Executive at AFG, said: “It is going to be incredibly tough this year given the economic outlook, increased costs associated with the Employment Rights Bill and continued local authority budget cuts.”

Kirsty Murphy, Chief People Officer at AFG, said: “We value our hard-working colleagues and recognise they are critical to the success of the organisation and the sector. Our commitment to them is unwavering.

“Over the past three years, AFG has invested £13.5m to improve pay for our frontline colleagues and £2.8m to colleagues in other roles.”

At AFG, we support around 900 people with learning disabilities and mental health conditions across the North West. The health and social care sector continues to face a recruitment crisis, with Skills for Care estimating a further 430,000 social care workers will be needed by 2035 – and 540,000 by 2040 – to meet UK demand. In light of this, we are committed to improving working conditions for social care workers to help address the recruitment challenges in the sector.

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