NHS Pay Progression: Pay Steps Within Your Band and Moving Up a Band

What each pay step is worth (England, 2026/27)

Band 2 has a single pay point, so there's no step to wait for. Take home is for a full-time contract with the NHS pension.

When your step is due

Your pay step date is the date you started in your band (or were promoted into it), and it doesn't change if a step is delayed. At the bottom of Band 5, for example, you move from £32,073 to £34,592 after 2 years, then to £39,043 after another 2. Moving to another NHS employer in the same band doesn't reset the clock: previous NHS service counts towards your next step.

The five conditions (England)

You move up on your pay step date if:

• –you've had an appraisal in the last 12 months, with outcomes that meet your organisation's standards
• –you're not in a formal capability process
• –you don't have a live formal disciplinary sanction for conduct
• –you've completed your statutory and mandatory training
• –if you're a line manager, you've done appraisals for your own staff.

The handbook says staff who meet the standards are expected to progress, and your manager should be told in advance that your step is due. The appraisal doesn't have to be timed to match your step date.

What can't hold you back

• –Sickness absence. Warnings for absence due to ill health, and processes for managing ill health, don't count.
• –Investigations and informal stages. Only a formal capability stage or a formal disciplinary sanction counts.
• –Things outside your control. If your employer didn't give you time for training, or didn't hold your appraisal, that shouldn't stop you progressing. Raise it with your manager as soon as you can, rather than waiting for the review.
• –Maternity, adoption or shared parental leave. The review can be held early; if it can't, the step is applied automatically while you're away.
• –A late sanction. A disciplinary sanction that starts after your pay step date can't be used to delay that step.

If your step is delayed

Your manager has to discuss which standard wasn't met, consider anything that explains it, record the decision and agree a plan with you to put it right. You can contest the decision through your employer's procedure; if you win, the step is backdated. Once you meet the standard, you move up from that date, and if the delay was due to a sanction or capability plan, you move up the day after it ends. Your pay step date for future years stays the same.

Bands 8c, 8d and 9: re-earning the top

At the top of Bands 8c, 8d and 9, from the year after you reach it, 5% or 10% of basic pay has to be re-earned each year by meeting the same standards. If you don't, pay can drop by that amount until you meet them again the following year.

Moving up a band

• –Promotion. You apply for a higher-banded post. Your pay starts at the bottom of the new band and your pay step date resets. If that would mean less than you earned before, counting unsocial hours, you keep your old pay until the new band overtakes it. See the band comparison tool for what a move is really worth.
• –Acting up. Covering a higher-band post temporarily, you go on the bottom of that band or the first point that gives you a rise.
• –Rebanding. If your job has grown, you can ask for it to be re-evaluated. Under the 2021 healthcare support worker profiles, Band 2 staff who do delegated clinical tasks should be on Band 3, and every Band 5 nursing role in English trusts is being reviewed by October 2028.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Each has its own section of the handbook on career and pay progression, and the Welsh section points to the same principles as England's rules. Check your employer's policy for the details where you work.