Camden Council is calling on businesses across London to follow their example by paying employees a fair wage.

As part of London Living Wage Week, which runs until Saturday, council leader Cllr Sarah Hayward is urging all the capital’s employers to pay staff at least £9.15 an hour.

On Monday, Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced a four per cent rise in the wage - calculated by the Greater London Authority (GLA) - from £8.80.

The wage is an informal benchmark, not a legally enforceable minimum level of pay like the national minimum wage, which the GLA calculates is the minimum pay needed for workers to lead a decent life.

Cllr Hayward, whose council became a London Living Wage employer in 2012, said: “If we can do it, despite our significant funding cuts, there really are no excuses for other employers in the capital to get away with paying their staff an unfair wage.

“Monday’s report that 600,000 workers in London now earn less than the living wage is shocking news and something that we are committed to helping to tackle in our borough.”

Camden Council is also introducing a minimum earnings guarantee - meaning by 2018 every one of the council’s 4,339 staff delivering public services will be paid at least £20,000 a year.

Out of 172 contracts awarded since July 2012, Camden Council has awarded 162 to companies paying at, or above, the London Living Wage and has set a deadline to complete the final 10 by 2017.