WORKERS at one of the most popular comedy venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have plenty to smile about.

The Stand is an accredited living wage employer, paying employees a minimum of £8.45 an hour. The purpose-built comedy club has 50 employees, a number that trebles during the Fringe.

Kenny O’Brien, director of the business, which also has comedy clubs in Glasgow and Newcastle, hopes more arts venues will follow its lead. He said: “Being an accredited living wage employer ensures a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We see the benefit of that in our extremely low staff turnover. Many of our staff stay for years.

“It also encourages seasonal staff for events such as the Fringe to come back year after year, which saves us time and money on retraining and, most importantly, means our customers are better served. For those reasons, I would highly encourage others in the arts sector to consider it.”

O’Brien said the company had always paid above the industry norm. “It sometimes means we have to pass extra costs on to the customer, but we still endeavour to keep prices as low as we can,” he said. “We want to make live comedy as accessible to everyone as possible.”

The commitment to fair pay was welcomed by Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance, which promotes the living wage in Scotland.

“We applaud The Stand for taking a stand on paying fair wages,” he said. “Gaining living wage accreditation is usually associated with larger companies and perhaps more corporate settings. However, we’re seeing more and more businesses from different sectors and of different sizes signing up for real living wage accreditation. It’s voluntary and it’s a simple process.”

Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe, now the largest arts festival in the world, is on until August 28 and will this year put on 3398 shows across 300 venues.

It began in 1947 when eight groups arrived in Edinburgh hoping to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival but were refused entry. Instead, they performed on the fringe of the Festival, giving birth to the Fringe.

The UK Living Wage outside of London is currently £8.45 per hour. The figures are calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission, based on the best available evidence on living standards in London and the UK.

It is higher than the UK Government’s so-called living wage which is just a rebranding of the legally binding minimum wage and applies only to those over the age of 25.

The accreditation programme in Scotland was launched in April 2014. It is an initiative from the Poverty Alliance, in partnership with the Living Wage Foundation, and is funded by the Scottish Government.

More than 25,000 people in Scotland have had a pay rise thanks to the Living Wage Initiative and more than 880 employers headquartered in Scotland have become accredited. Accreditation is voluntary. In the UK as a whole, there are 3000 accredited employers.

Accredited real living wage employers in Scotland span the private, public and third sectors. SMEs make up 75 per cent of the total number of employers and one in three local councils are accredited.

For more information visit www.scottishlivingwage.org