Lloyds pays staff £1,000 bonus to help deal with cost of living crisis

LLOYDS will hand its staff a £1,000 bonus to help them cope with the rising cost of living.

Britain’s second largest bank said that 64,182 employees, nearly its entire workforce, would receive the payment in August. Some executives and senior managers will be excluded. Companies are under pressure to cushion their workers from the impact of soaring prices, with inflation in the UK expected to exceed 10pc by the end of the year.

In its most recent survey, the Office for National Statistics found that about nine in 10 adults reported their cost of living had risen over the month of April, compared with 62pc in November, when the organisation first started polling the question.

The energy price cap was lifted by £693 to £1,971 – an increase of 54pc – from April 1, with further increases expected later in the year.

A Lloyds memo to staff said: “As the rising cost of living continues to impact our people and our customers we’ve been assessing the evolving outlook for inflation and considering how we can support you even further.”

It added: “This support is designed to help you during these uncertain economic times and is in addition to the steps we’ve already taken to increase the support available both to you and our customers.”

In May, members of Unite the Union demonstrated outside Lloyds’ AGM against the bank’s 2022 pay offer, which it said had plunged low-paid workers into economic insecurity.

Unite claimed that, under their current salaries, bank branch and call centre staff were unable to sufficiently heat their homes, while others had stopped making pension contributions in an effort to pay their climbing bills.

Last year, Lloyds paid out £1.4bn to its shareholders in dividend payments and began a share buy-back scheme worth £2bn following bumper profits of £5.9bn in 2021.

Meanwhile, FTSE 100 cyber firm Avast said it is giving staff a paid week off next month. Chief executive Ondrej Vlcek said there will be a “companywide shutdown” in the first week of July to “minimise the risk of burnout”.