Rolls Royce to offer staff £2,000 living cost bonus

More than 14,000 staff at Rolls Royce will be offered a £2,000 one-off payment to help with the rising cost of living in the UK.

The payment will be for junior management and shop floor staff, mainly based at its Derby and Bristol sites, said the engineering firm.

The lump sum will start to be rolled out to 3,000 staff in their August pay.

The remaining 11,000 unionised workers will receive the payment after their union approves the amount.

Earlier this month Lloyds Bank announced measures to help staff cope with rising costs, as energy bills continue to soar and UK inflation hits a 40-year high.

A Rolls Royce spokesperson told the BBC that 70% of its UK workforce will receive the payment, adding that the company is also "offering our shop floor staff the highest annual pay rise for at least a decade".

There are ongoing discussions with unions about a pay settlement for 2022-2023, the spokesperson said, and the cost of living issue is to be a factor in those negotiations.

The spokesperson also told the BBC that the 11,000 unionised members will also be offered a 4% increase in pay, back-dated to March.

Pay rates and measures to help UK staff have been increasing as businesses have been seeking to recruit and retain staff, after official figures showed that there were fewer unemployed people than job vacancies for the first time since records began.

Inflation - the rate at which prices rise - currently stands at 9%, and is expected to increase again later this year.

Rolls Royce was badly impacted by the global coronavirus pandemic, which hit demand for its aircraft engines as international air travel ground to a halt.

In 2020 it announced plans to cut its global workforce by 9,000 by the end of this year, with 3,000 of those jobs going in the UK. At the time it said it would take "several years" for the industry to recover from the pandemic.