Garden centre chain Wyevale is to give staff across the business a 3 per cent pay increase in order to motivate them.

The initiative comes as it revealed an uplift of 3 per cent in like-for-like sales in the first two weeks of January.

Wyevale will also recruit up to 100 management trainees this year, which the retailer said it will train as store managers.

Wyevale chief executive Nicholas Marshall said: “This recruitment drive will engage bright young people to help in building our business and enable them to eventually become our next generation of store managers. Incentivising our staff to be the best in the industry is also key, hence the pay increase.

“We are now well down the road of refinancing and treat 2009 with cautiousness, but with hard work, commitment and compelling product lines we believe we can grow the business this year.”

Wyevale’s biggest shareholder Sir Tom Hunter recently completed a debt for equity swap with lender HBOS, which reduced his holding in the company from 40 to 25 per cent.

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