Council staff should prepare to strike if their demand for an improved pay offer is rejected, a union leader will warn today.

Andrea Egan, general secretary of Unison, will urge up to 200,000 council and school staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to back strike ballots next month.

The UK’s largest trade union said that it was pressing ahead with a strike ballot over the refusal of local authorities to increase a 3.3 per cent pay offer for 2026/27.

Addressing delegates at a conference in Brighton today, Ms Egan is due to say: ‘Strike action is our leverage. It’s our way of saying we won’t just accept crumbs from the table.’

Speaking ahead of the conference, she said: ‘Staff deserve far more during the continued cost-of-living crisis.

‘Local government and school staff keep communities going. Strikes are a last resort but workers must be prepared to use every option available.’

Walkouts would affect social care, schools, waste collection, libraries and housing services.

It comes after the Daily Mail revealed nearly 15,000 public sector staff were given paid leave to moonlight as trade unionists and help plot strikes last year - including 3,000 NHS workers, new figures show.

Around £90million of taxpayers' cash was spent by councils, schools, Whitehall departments and the health service last year to cover the cost of staff engaging in trade union work.

Of more than 20,000 union representatives embedded in public bodies, 14,976 (74 per cent) enjoyed paid leave to work on union activities.

Staggeringly, 2,258 of them spent more than half their working hours on union business rather than delivering public services - with nearly 1,000 devoting their entire time to working for union causes. This included handing out leaflets and plotting industrial action.

It means taxpayers have helped fund strike plots that have crippled their public services, including resident doctors' walkouts, HM Revenue and Customs strikes and industrial action by bin collectors.

The arrangement, known as 'facility time', gives public sector workers the right to be paid their wages while carrying out trade union activity.