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After several months of sweating it out on the front line of an unprecedented crisis, a pay rise across the public sector is some welcome news for almost a million key workers.

But economists say that once inflation is stripped out, average pay for public sector workers remains below levels seen in 2010, due to pay freezes, or very modest increases, in the years of austerity that followed.

And departments won't get extra funding to pay for these rises, a reminder that the government is still having to watch the pennies and pounds as it faces the biggest deficit in its finances in peacetime.

The Treasury claims the pay awards are assessed for affordability; that they shouldn't affect the provision of public services.

But budgets are already under pressure in some areas - in schools, for example, where extra costs may have arisen and income streams from the likes of clubs may have disappeared. In those cases, these pay rises might well pose some tough questions.