London weighting is an allowance paid to certain civil servants, teachers, airline employees, PhD students, police and security officers in and around

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, the capital of England. It is designed to help these workers with the cost of living in Greater London, which is higher than that of the rest of the UK. Its purpose is to encourage key workers to stay in Greater London. London weighting was introduced for civil servants in 1920 and was set by the London Pay Board. However, since 1974, the

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

, and later the

Mayor of London The mayor of London is the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom. The current m ...

, in partnership with central government, have been responsible for setting it. In 2002, teachers from across

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshi ...

went on strike to try to force London weighting to be raised. In many professions, such as teaching, a different level of weighting is applied to

Inner London Inner London is the name for the group of London boroughs which form the interior part of Greater London and are surrounded by Outer London. With its origins in the bills of mortality, it became fixed as an area for statistics in 1847 and was ...

and

Outer London Outer London is the name for the group of London boroughs that form a ring around Inner London. Together, the inner and outer boroughs form London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. These were areas that were not part of the County of Londo ...

. In addition, many employers use different pay grades for Greater London as opposed to a fixed allowance, and some groups the police, for example have both a London weighting and a London allowance. Since the abolition of the Pay Board, no organisation has been responsible for setting London weighting. The GLA carried out an investigation into the issue but did not propose a new figure. Currently, the amounts paid by employers as London weighting, or London allowance, or in some cases both, vary greatly. Further information is available from pay analysts such as the

Labour Research Department The Labour Research Department (LRD) is an independent trade union based research organisation, based in London, that provides information to support trade union activity and campaigns. About 2,000 trade union organisations, including 51 national ...

References

{{reflist Economy of London Wages and salaries

See also

References