NHS Pay Rise 2023
ByAndyUpdated onMay 17, 2023
Latest Update
The NHS Staff Council has voted to accept the Government’s 23/24 pay offer. This means that all staff working on Agenda for Change will receive a 5% pay rise, and a one-off bonus of at least £1,655. It is likely this will be paid with salaries in June.
Three unions – the RCN, Unite and the Society of Radiographers have rejected the offer and will ballot for industrial action. Their members will still receive the pay rise and one off bonus.
After negotiation with trades unions, the Government has made an NHS staff pay offer for 2023/24 of 5%.
In addition, staff will receive two one-off bonus payments for 2022/23 worth 6% of their salary in total. The bonus payments are for:
- 2% as a non-consolidated one-off award on top of their 2022/23 salary.
- 4% (and a minimum of £1,250) as an ‘NHS backlog bonus.
The offer applies to all staff on Agenda for Change, including nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists.
Unions will ballot their members over the offer in the next couple of weeks, but as this is a negotiated offer, they are recommending that their members accept the offer. Unison head of health Sara Gorton said:
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“If accepted, the offer would boost pay significantly this year and mean a wage increase next year that’s more than the government had budgeted for. This is better than having to wait many more months for the NHS pay review body to make its recommendation.”
The official announcement of the offer can be found on the government website.
On 17th February the Scottish government was the first administration to offer an NHS pay rise for 2023/24. They have offered a one off payment of £387 to £939 (dependent on band), plus an average salary increase of 6.5%. This comes on top of the 7.5% pay increase for 2022/23.
The DHSC in England hasn’t formally offered a pay rise yet, but on 21 February 2023 they submitted evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body and the Doctors and Dentists Review Body saying that “funding is available for pay awards up to 3.5%” in 2023. They added that rises above this would require “trade offs for public service delivery or future government borrowing”. Although this isn’t a formal pay offer – that will depend on what the NHSPRB and DDRB recommend, it sets the framework in which they are likely to operate.
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For 2022/23 the Welsh Government has offered staff an additional 3% rise on top of the 4% already announced, and this is being considered by unions. See the section below for more details. Additionally, there are reports (Financial Times, 14 February 2023) that the UK Government is considering a lump sum payment for staff on in England.
The 2022 / 23 pay rises – which were worth an average of 4% for people working on Agenda for Change contracts in England, and similar amounts for others such as doctors working in the NHS – are under dispute and unions are either taking or balloting for industrial action.
The rest of this article lists the pay rises offered for the 2022/23 year, and links out to other articles on the site with more detailed breakdowns of updated pay scales.
Agenda For Change Pay Rise 2022 – England
In England, the Government accepted the NHS Pay Review Body recommendation that most staff working on Agenda for Change should be awarded a £1,400 pay rise.
A few staff working at the top of band 6 and in all of band 7 will be given slightly higher awards to balance out these grades.
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An award of £1,400 per year works out at an average pay increase of 4% across the entire Agenda for Change workforce. Because the increase is for a set monetary amount rather than for a percentage, it means that in practice lower paid staff will see a higher than 4% increase, and higher paid staff will see a lower percentage increase.
Here are three examples of the pay increase:
- A full time employee working on Band 2 will see their basic salary increase by £1,400 – from £19,198 to £21,318 – which is an increase of 7.03%.
- A full time employee working at the bottom of Band 7 will see their basic salary increase by £1,602 – from £40,057 to £41,659 – which is an increase of exactly 4.00%.
- A full time employee working at Band 9 will see their basic salary increase by £1,400 – from £93,735 to £95,135 – which is an increase of 1.49%.
Further more detailed information of each pay scale can be found on our articles about Agenda for Change pay bands. We also have an article on AfC bands in London, which include London weighting.
The 2022 pay awards were rejected by unions.
They argue that the average 4% pay rise (a) doesn’t reflect either historical underpayment over several years when pay rises were lower than inflation and (b) doesn’t come close to addressing the 2022 cost of living crisis which has seen inflation rates of over 10%. In effect, they argue that a pay award that is lower than the rate of inflation is a real terms pay cut.
As a result, unions are at the time of writing either taking industrial action or balloting members on whether to strike.
Scotland – AfC Pay Rise 2022/23
The Scottish Government awarded a more generous 7.5% (average) pay rises to staff working on Agenda for Change in Scotland.
This is made up of a minimum pay increase of £2,205 for all staff, which translates to pay increases of between 5% and 11.32% depending on what band staff are on.
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Slightly different arrangements are in place for staff working on Bands 5, 6, 7 and 8a.
Wales – AfC Pay Rise 2022/23
The Welsh Government initially awarded a pay increase in line with the £1,400 pay increase in England.
In February 2023, the Welsh Government made an improved offer which led to unions in Wales cancelling their planned industrial action.
The new offer is for an additional 3% pay rise on top of the 4% already awarded. However, 1.5% of this pay rise would be non-consolidated, which means that it would be effectively be a one-off ‘bonus’ payment and not carried forward into the next financial year.
Northern Ireland – AfC Pay Rise 2022/23
Agenda for Change pay rises in Northern Ireland will mirror the awards made in England.
Nurses Pay Rise 2022
The majority of nurses in the UK are employed on Agenda for Change terms and conditions. Because of this, the section above on the 2022 AfC pay rise also applies to nurses.
Doctors Pay Rise 2022
Note: we have a separate article with the latest news on Doctors pay rises.
The Government accepted the DDRB’s recommendations and awarded most doctors in England a 4.5% pay increase for 2022/23. This applies to all doctors pay scales with the exception of Junior Doctors, whose pay rise is covered in more detail below.
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The 4.5% pay rise applies to the following groups of doctors UK-wide unless explicitly noted below:
- Consultants
- SAS doctors in Scotland
- SAS doctors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on the 2008 contracts
- Doctors in training in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Independent contractor GPs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Salaried GPs
- The GP trainers’ grant and GP appraisers’ grant
- Doctors and dentists employed by Trusts and Health Boards on locally-determined contracts.
The BMA argues that this amounts to a real terms pay cut and has announced that it plans to ballot members in many of these groups on taking industrial action.
Junior Doctors Pay Rise 2022
The Government awarded junior doctors a 2% pay rise in 2022, less than half of the award offered to other doctors and NHS staff.
The Government aragued that this is because junior doctor salaries are still tied to a previously agreed multi-year pay deal, and therefore the DDRB recommendations should not apply to them.
The BMA argues that this is unfair because the previously agreed contract allows for DDRB recommendations to be taken into account if they differ from the amount agreed as part of the multi-year deal. The BMA announced in late 2022 that it would ballot junior doctors on taking industrial action.
Very Senior Manager Pay Rise 2022
After initially deciding not to increase VSM pay in the NHS in 2022, the Government announced in July 2022 that it would accept the Senior Salaries Review Board (SSRB) recommendation and awarded staff working on VSM pay scales a 3% pay increase for 2022/23.