Your NHS Payslip Explained: Every Section, Code and Deduction

The six parts of an ESR payslip

• –Employee and PAYE details (top). Your assignment number (with -2, -3 if you have more than one post), pay scale, full-time salary for your pay point, Inc. Date (your next pay step date, or when you reached the top of the band), contracted hours, part-time salary if you work part time, tax code and NI number.
• –Pay and allowances (left). Each payment this month: basic pay, enhancements, overtime, London weighting, arrears. Columns show the hours worked, the hours paid, the rate and the amount.
• –Deductions (right). Tax, National Insurance, NHS pension, student loan, and anything voluntary such as salary sacrifice, union fees or car parking.
• –Year to date (bottom left). Totals since 6 April. Your SD reference number, your NHS Pensions reference, is here too.
• –This period summary (bottom right). Total pay, total deductions and net pay for the month.
• –Messages from your employer. Below the payslip online, or on the back of a paper one.

Codes you'll see

Codes vary a little between employers; your payroll team's guide has the full list.

A worked example: new Band 5, England, one weekend

In practice unsocial hours are usually paid a month in arrears, so the weekend you work in May appears on June's payslip.

Checking each deduction

• –Pension: your tier rate times your pensionable pay for the month (basic, unsocial hours and London weighting, less any salary sacrifice). Here, 8.3% of £2,820.37.
• –Income tax: on a 1257L code, about 20% of pay after pension, above £1,047.50 a month. Here: (£2,820.37 - £234.09 - £1,047.50) x 20% = £307.76.
• –National Insurance: 8% of pay above £1,048 a month, 2% above £4,189. Pension doesn't reduce it. Here: (£2,820.37 - £1,048) x 8% = £141.79.

If a figure is well off, the usual causes are the tax code, a pay step that hasn't been applied (compare Inc. Date with your band's step dates), the wrong number of unsocial hours, or a pension tier based on the wrong pay. Our take home calculator builds the same payslip for your own band and shifts.

AfC Absence: holiday pay on your extras

If you regularly get unsocial hours, overtime or on-call pay, your holiday pay has to include them, because NHS holiday pay is what you'd have earned at work. Some employers pay this as a separate line, called AfC Absence at Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, for example, worked out from your average extras over a recent reference period and paid a month or so after the leave. If you take leave and see no AfC Absence line the following month, ask payroll.

Bank staff: WTD pay

If you work bank shifts, you may see WTD pay: a supplement on top of your hourly rate that represents your statutory holiday pay, instead of paid days off.

When things change

Changes to hours, band or return from leave sometimes miss the payroll cut-off and appear the following month as arrears (ARRS). That's normal; a missing change two months running isn't.