Thousands of lectures and support staff at colleges in England will go on strike in January if they do not get a better pay offer.

Three unions representing staff at further education colleges say there will be a strike on 30 January if the employers do not increase their offer of 2.3%.

Last month, a strike on the same issue led to the closure of 40 further education colleges in England, with 30,000 lecturers and support taking part.

The unions involved - Association of Teachers and Lectures, Unison and Nafhe - are angry that talks earlier this month did not bring a higher offer.

Disruption

Barry Lovejoy, the joint secretary of the trade union side said: "Our New Year's wish is for an end to this damaging dispute in further education (FE) colleges.

"Charles Clarke announced a �1.2 billion Christmas present for the FE sector, which should make a fair settlement possible and further disruption avoidable."

Pay gap

The unions say they are disappointed that money promised to the college sector by the government is not filtering through to them.

Lecturers say they want the gap between their pay and that of school teachers to be closed and for college support staff to be paid in line with people in similar posts in local government.

The unions are meeting the employers - represented by the Association of Colleges - for talks on 13 January.

The employers had hoped the unions would suspend all threats of strike action during the period of negotiations.

David Gibson, of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: " We believe that the trade unions that represent our staff should continue negotiations on 13 January without pre-judging the outcome with the threat of strike action."

"The commitment of AoC to college staff remains steadfast on the issue of pay - we want to secure equality of pay with schools and other training providers for all staff in further education colleges."

The association says the government's recent pledge of an extra �1.2bn to the FE sector by 2005-6 will give colleges flexibility to tackle the problem over pay.

"This additional �1.2bn, which will not be available until next year, should then go some way to creating equality between the funding of pay for teachers and support staff in schools and colleges," Mr Gibson said.

" AoC still wants to see this gap closed completely."