Lecturers, support staff, security, cleaners and caterers will return to the picket lines at university and college campuses across Britain today over "peanuts" pay.

The walkout is the third one-day strike in as many months for the University and College Union (UCU), with members of Unison, Unite and Scottish teaching union EIS set to join them over university bosses' insistence on another year of real-terms pay cuts.

Vice-chancellors have drawn a line under a pay rise of 1 per cent for 2014 - barely half the current rate of inflation - while the unions say rising prices have eaten away 13 per cent of the value of their paycheques since 2009.