Lidl has announced that it will be increasing wages of more than 16,000 of its employees next year, as a result of a bump in the living wage.

The low-cost supermarket said that it would be increasing entry-level wages from £8.45 to £8.75 per hour outside of London and £9.75 to £10.20 within the M25, in-line with the increase in living wage announced on Monday.

The move will come into effect on 1 March. Lidl said it had committed to an additional annual investment of over £3.5m to cover the cost of the rise.

In 2015, it invested £9m when it claimed to become the first supermarket in the UK to pay the real living wage.

Unlike the national minimum wage, the living wage is an hourly rate of pay set independently and updated annually that is calculated with reference to the basic cost of living in the UK.

It is consistently slightly higher in London than it is outside of the capital.