At last night's Cabinet meeting here in Barking and Dagenham, my colleagues and I were proud to agree a £9 minimum wage for our lowest paid staff, paid for by sharing a chief executive and making efficiencies in senior management posts.

This is not only 45p higher per hour than the London Living Wage which a number of other London boroughs have agreed to implement, it's also going to be back-dated to January so that those who work for us, serving the public, get a real boost for the work they do each and every day in service of the public.

Why are we doing this and why now? The answer is simple: this Coalition Government has made it clear that supporting the poorest people in work is not a priority. Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers – especially those in local government – have had to contend with a pay freeze for years, despite the soaring cost of living. Utility bills are inflation busting. Water rates the same. Even Boris Johnson – London's Mayor – thinks it is appropriate to whack up the cost of travel in London way above inflation.

Local authorities can only do so much to protect people as far as possible from this. We will be announcing a further freeze in council tax this year – we recognise that in times like this when people are struggling, increasing council tax bills is both wrong and unfair.

It's against that backdrop that we've decided that our workers who earn the least deserve more. We believe that 1,500 of our lowest paid workers will benefit from this change. That's those council officers who deliver front-line services – they are our refuse collectors, our school cleaners, our catering staff and our teaching assistants.