NHS pay bands 2026/27

Hourly rates are derived — annual pay ÷ 52.143 weeks ÷ the 37.5-hour standard week — because this circular publishes annual salaries only.

Each band has its own page with unsocial hours rates and London weighting worked out for that band’s salaries. To see what reaches your bank, use the take-home calculator; for time off rather than money, annual leave entitlement is set by service and differs in all four nations. See also this year’s pay rise in each nation and the unsocial hours rates in full.

What Agenda for Change actually is

Agenda for Change is the pay system covering almost everyone in the NHS except doctors, dentists and very senior managers. Every post is matched to a band from 1 to 9 by a job evaluation scheme that scores the work itself — knowledge, responsibility, physical and emotional demands — rather than the person doing it or how long they have been there. That is why two people doing the same job are on the same band, and why moving to harder work is how you change band.

The band sets a range, not a single salary. Within it you move up by steps, and how many steps a band has and how long each takes is fixed nationally, not decided by your employer. So the two questions a pay scale answers are different: which band am I is about the job, and where in the band am I is about time served in it.

How the bands work

Agenda for Change is not a single ladder. Each band has its own steps, and you move up by time served rather than by anything happening nationally: bands 2 to 4 have an entry and a top step, bands 5 upward add an intermediate step in between. The years to top column is how long it takes to walk a band from bottom to top on standard progression.

Band 1 is closed to new entrants. Band 2 currently publishes entry and top at the same figure, so there is nothing to progress to within it.

How a post gets its band

Not by its job title. A post is banded under the NHS Job Evaluation Scheme, which scores it against sixteen factors — communication, knowledge, physical effort, responsibility for patients, and so on. In most cases a local matching panel compares the post to a national job profile: a description of a commonly occurring role, published by the Job Evaluation Group of the NHS Staff Council, carrying the score range that places it in a band. Where no profile fits, the post is evaluated locally against the same factors.

This is why two people on the same band can do visibly different jobs, and why a job title on its own tells you very little: what counts is the score. Each band page lists the published profiles that score into that band, and what the profile says the role does. The scheme is run by the NHS Staff Council for the whole of the UK, so unlike the pay scales — which each nation sets separately — the profiles and their scores are the same in all four nations.

How you move up, and how you do not

Progression within a band is time-served: you reach the next step after the number of years the table shows, provided the standards in your appraisal are met. It is not a competition and there is no cap on how many people progress. Every band on this table tops out in 2 to 5 years.

Moving between bands is not progression at all. There is no automatic route from band 5 to band 6 — a band 6 post is a different job with a different job description, and you apply for it and are appointed to it like any other vacancy. This is the single most common misunderstanding about Agenda for Change, and it is why the years-to-top figure stops at the top of a band rather than running on.

One consequence worth knowing: because pension contributions are charged on the whole of your pensionable pay at the rate for the tier you fall in, a step increase that crosses a tier boundary costs more than it looks. Each band page says whether its own steps do that.

What each band gained this year

The award was 3.3% on every pay point, so what that is worth in pounds rises with the band — from £807 at the entry step of band 2 to £4,146 at the top of band 9. A single percentage applied to a wide scale is not a single pay rise.

Gross, before deductions, and before any change in pension tier that the rise itself might cause.

What counts as pensionable pay

Not everything you are paid is pensionable, and the difference decides both what you contribute and what you eventually draw. Basic pay and unsocial hours enhancements are pensionable. Overtime generally is not, nor are expenses. Long-term recruitment and retention premia count; short-term ones do not.

This matters more than it sounds, because the contribution tier is set by your pensionable pay rather than by everything on your payslip. Somebody working heavy overtime can take home considerably more than their tier suggests, and will not be building pension on any of it.

About the hourly figures

Hourly rates here are ours, not the NHS Employers table's: annual pay divided by 52.143 weeks and by the 37.5-hour Agenda for Change week, rounded to the penny. Where a figure is transcribed from a published document this site says so; this one is derived, and is marked as such because the distinction matters.

Note the 37.5-hour week. NJC local government staff work a 37-hour week, so an hourly rate cannot be carried across between the two.

On-call is not set nationally in England

There is no national on-call or sleep-in rate to publish here, and that is a fact about the agreement rather than a gap in our data. NHS Terms and Conditions of Service Handbook, paragraph 2.26 and annex 29 — since 1 April 2011 on-call payments are set by local agreement, so there is no national figure to publish.

So what you are paid for on-call depends on your employer’s own agreement. Your payslip or your staff side representative is the place to find it — we will not guess at a figure. The other UK nations do set theirs nationally, and those are published on their pages.

What this page does not tell you

These are basic full-time salaries before deductions. They exclude income tax, National Insurance and pension contributions, so your take-home will be lower. They also exclude High Cost Area Supplements (London weighting), unsocial hours enhancements, on-call payments and overtime — all of which can change what actually reaches your bank considerably.

These are the England scales. The other nations negotiate their own Agenda for Change rates and the figures differ. Welsh rates sit above England’s at every band. Scottish rates sit higher again, and Scotland also cut its full-time week to 36 hours on 1 April 2026, so its hourly rates are not comparable with England’s 37.5-hour ones. Northern Ireland has had no 2026/27 award at all and is still paying last year’s rates. See the methodology and the source register.