Rail unions will meet on Thursday to decide whether to accept the pay offer that averted Britain’s first national train strike for 20 years over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Although the leaders of the RMT, TSSA and Unite unions agreed to call off the strike during talks involving the conciliation service Acas, local union representatives still need to ratify the agreement with members.

The walkout was suspended after Network Rail, which operates UK train infrastructure, made significant concessions, including the reinstatement of a guarantee that there will be no compulsory redundancies before December 2016 and a 1 per cent increase in pay backdated to January 1 2015.

Some employees will also receive a 1.4 per cent increase from January 1 2016, and another 0.7 per cent rise will be implemented if the unions agree to different ways of working.