NHS Pay Bands 2026/27

How a job gets its band

Bands belong to jobs, not people. Every Agenda for Change post is banded through the NHS Job Evaluation Scheme, which measures the skills, responsibility and effort the job needs. Most jobs are matched to a national job profile; jobs that don't fit one are evaluated locally. Either way the job is scored on 16 factors: communications and relationship skills, knowledge, training and experience, analytical and judgemental skills, planning and organisational skills, physical skills, responsibility for patient or client care, responsibility for policy and service development, responsibility for financial and physical resources, responsibility for human resources, responsibility for information resources, responsibility for research and development, freedom to act, physical effort, mental effort, emotional effort, working conditions.

Matching has strict rules. The panel compares the job with the profile factor by factor, and a job only matches if no factor is more than one level away from the profile, there's no difference at all on knowledge, training and experience or on freedom to act, and differences affect no more than five factors. That's why two jobs with the same title can sit in different bands at different trusts.

If your job has grown beyond its job description, the route to a higher band is to get the description updated and the job re-evaluated, not to ask for a pay rise. In England every Band 5 nursing role is being reviewed this way by October 2028.

Moving up a band, and moving up within one

Within a band you move to the next pay point on your pay step date, after two or three years depending on the band, if you meet the progression conditions (in England: an appraisal in the last 12 months, mandatory training done, and no formal capability process or live disciplinary sanction).

When you're promoted, your basic pay goes to the bottom point of the new band and your pay step date starts again. If that would leave you worse off once unsocial hours payments and any long-term recruitment and retention premium are counted, your old salary is protected until the new one overtakes it. Paid overtime isn't protected, which matters for a move from Band 7 to 8a, where overtime stops.

How hourly rates are worked out

The NHS terms and conditions set a week's pay as 7/365ths of the annual salary. Divide that by your weekly hours and you have the hourly rate: for Band 5 in England, £32,073 × 7 ÷ 365 ÷ 37.5 = £16.40. That matches NHS Employers' published rates to the penny. Some calculators divide by 52 weeks or by 1,957.5 hours instead, which is why their hourly figures can be a few pence out. Scotland's hourly rates are worked out on a 36-hour week, so they're higher for the same salary.