NHS Pay Calculator: NHS Pay by Band 2026/27

What is the NHS pay calculator?

An NHS pay calculator works out what NHS staff take home each month from their Agenda for Change band. In 2026/27 a newly qualified Band 5 nurse earns £32,073 a year before tax, which leaves about £2,040 a month after pension, Income Tax and National Insurance. This guide works out every band by hand from the official scales.

That short answer is the whole point of this page. Most NHS pay calculators on the internet ask for a band and show a single number, with no working shown and no explanation of what came off or why. This guide does the opposite. It shows the official 2026/27 Agenda for Change pay scales, then works through the deductions one at a time — pension, Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan — so you can see exactly where every pound goes, and check the result against your own payslip. The method is the same one our worked £40,000 after-tax example uses, applied to every NHS band instead of a single salary.

UK Payroll Calculators publishes free UK payroll tools and guides, checked against the current rules. Everything on this page uses the 2026/27 tax year, which runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027, and the Agenda for Change scales published by NHS Employers. Where a figure comes from somewhere else, the source is named next to it. Nothing here is an estimate dressed up as a fact: the worked examples show their method, and the limits of each example are stated plainly.

Before the detail, one honest warning. Your payslip is the final word on your own pay. Trusts apply the same national scales, but local allowances, shift patterns, overtime and salary sacrifice arrangements differ from person to person. Use this guide to understand your pay and to spot mistakes, and use your contract and your ESR record — the NHS Electronic Staff Record — to settle anything this guide cannot.

How much does a Band 5 nurse earn in 2026/27?

A newly qualified nurse, midwife or paramedic starts on Band 5. In 2026/27 the Band 5 salary in England is £32,073 a year at the entry step, £34,592 at the intermediate step and £39,043 at the top step. Those are full-time figures for a 37.5-hour week, before London weighting, overtime or unsocial hours enhancements, and before any deductions.

The gross salary is only the starting point. What reaches the bank is lower, and the gap surprises most new starters. Here is the full working for each Band 5 step, using the 2026/27 rates: pension at 8.3% for the entry and intermediate steps and 9.8% for the top step, Income Tax at 20% on taxable pay above the £12,570 Personal Allowance, and employee National Insurance at 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270. Student loan is not included — it depends on your loan plan, and it is covered separately below.

At the entry step, £32,073 a year, the pension contribution is £2,662.06 a year, Income Tax is £3,368.19 and National Insurance is £1,560.24. Take-home pay is £24,482.51 a year, which is £2,040.21 a month. Without the pension contribution, the same salary would leave £26,612.16 a year, or £2,217.68 a month — the pension costs £177.47 a month at this step, and it also cuts the tax bill, because pension contributions come off before tax is worked out.

At the intermediate step, £34,592 a year, the pension is £2,871.14, Income Tax is £3,830.17 and National Insurance is £1,761.76. Take-home pay is £26,128.93 a year, or £2,177.41 a month. The step up from entry to intermediate is worth £2,519 a year gross, and £137.20 a month in take-home pay.

At the top step, £39,043 a year, the pension rises to £3,826.21 because the salary has crossed into the 9.8% pension tier. Income Tax is £4,529.36 and National Insurance is £2,117.84. Take-home pay is £28,569.59 a year, or £2,380.80 a month. The move from entry to top of Band 5 is worth £6,970 a year gross and £340.59 a month in take-home pay — but it takes years to get there, because pay progression depends on time in post: two years to the intermediate step, then a further two years to the top step, subject to meeting the progression requirements.

Two things in those figures catch people out. First, the pension tier change. Crossing from 8.3% to 9.8% at £35,156 means the top step of Band 5 pays a higher pension rate on the whole salary, not just on the part above the threshold. Second, the hourly rate. Band 5 pays £16.40 an hour at entry, £17.69 at the intermediate step and £19.97 at the top step, using the official method of dividing the annual salary by 52.2 weeks and then by 37.5 hours. If you divide the rounded annual figure yourself you can land a penny or two lower, because the published hourly figures are rounded from unrounded pay points — for payslip checks, use the published hourly table, not your own division. Our hourly rate converter will turn any annual salary into an hourly rate the same way, if you want to check a part-time or bank-shift figure.

What are the NHS pay bands for 2026/27?

Almost every NHS job outside medicine, dentistry and very senior management is paid on Agenda for Change. The system groups jobs into nine bands, with Band 8 split into four sub-bands, and the pay for each band is set nationally. A Band 5 nurse in Newcastle and a Band 5 physiotherapist in Plymouth start on the same basic salary, because the band is set by the job, not the person or the trust. The NHS Job Evaluation Scheme scores each post on factors such as knowledge, responsibility and working conditions, and the score decides the band. The annual pay award then decides what each band is worth.

The 2026/27 scales below are the England figures published by NHS Employers on 12 February 2026, effective from 1 April 2026, after a 3.3% pay award. They are full-time equivalent salaries for a 37.5-hour week, before London weighting and before any enhancements. Band 1 is closed to new entrants.

Band 1 and Band 2 each have a single pay point, so entry and top are the same £25,272 — the dash means the band has no intermediate step. Bands 3 and 4 have two steps, with two years between them at Band 3 and three years at Band 4. Bands 5 to 9 have three steps, with two years to the intermediate step and a further two years to the top step at Band 5, and three years at Bands 6 to 9. Progression is not automatic in the way it once was — it depends on meeting the requirements for your role — but the timeframes above are the standard ones in the Agenda for Change handbook.

The same scales in hourly terms, as published by NHS Employers, are: Band 2 £12.92 an hour; Band 3 £13.17 to £14.05; Band 4 £14.52 to £15.93; Band 5 £16.40 to £19.97; Band 6 £20.44 to £24.61; Band 7 £25.26 to £28.90; Band 8a £29.42 to £33.11; Band 8b £34.05 to £39.57; Band 8c £40.66 to £46.85; Band 8d £48.26 to £55.65; and Band 9 £57.68 to £66.37. The hourly rate matters more than most people realise, because overtime, unsocial hours enhancements and bank shifts are all paid by the hour, from these rates.

Three things about the table deserve attention. First, the gap between bands is not even. The jump from the top of Band 5 (£39,043) to the entry of Band 6 (£39,959) is only £916, while the jump from the top of Band 6 (£48,117) to the entry of Band 7 (£49,387) is £1,270. Promotion to the next band is worth far more over a career than a single pay step, because each band's top is higher. The pension tier follows the band too — but the unsocial hours percentage goes the other way: it falls as the band rises, from 41% at Band 2 to 30% at Bands 4 to 9 — so a promotion can mean a lower enhancement rate on nights and Sundays, even as basic pay rises.

Second, the devolved nations set their own rates. Scotland agreed a 3.75% deal for 2026/27 under a two-year agreement, published in circular PCS(AFC)2026/1, and moved to a 36-hour full-time week from April 2026. Wales applied the same 3.3% as England, in circular AfC(W) 02/2026, but to its own scales — and because Wales also applies a Real Living Wage floor of £13.45 an hour at the bottom of the scale, its Band 5 figures run higher than England's despite the same percentage. Northern Ireland had not confirmed its 2026/27 award when these scales were published, so staff there remained on 2025/26 rates. As a guide, a Band 5 entry salary is £32,557 in Wales and £34,544 in Scotland, against £32,073 in England; the full step figures are £35,114 and £39,631 in Wales and £36,911 and £43,039 in Scotland. The rest of this guide uses the England scales unless it says otherwise, because they are the ones NHS Employers publishes in full — if you work in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, check your own nation's circular before relying on a figure.

Third, the figures above are basic salary only. London weighting, unsocial hours enhancements, overtime, recruitment and retention premia and on-call allowances all sit on top, and for many staff they are worth thousands of pounds a year. They are covered in their own sections below, because each one has its own rules and its own traps.

How do you work out NHS take-home pay?

Take-home pay is what is left after four deductions, taken in this order. First, the NHS pension contribution comes off your gross pay. Second, Income Tax is worked out on what is left after the pension contribution, because NHS pension contributions are made through the net pay arrangement — they reduce your taxable pay. Third, employee National Insurance is worked out on your full gross pay, because the pension contribution does not reduce the pay that National Insurance is charged on. Fourth, student loan repayments come off if your pay is above your loan plan's threshold. What is left is your take-home pay.

That order matters, and it is where most online calculators go wrong. A calculator that takes pension off after tax, or that charges National Insurance on pay after pension, will give you the wrong answer. The method below is the one payroll uses, and every worked example in this guide follows it. The figures were worked by hand from the official 2026/27 rates and checked twice — once by hand and once by independent re-computation — on 12 November 2026.

Step one is the pension. Find your pension tier from your actual annual pensionable pay, which is your basic salary plus pensionable enhancements such as unsocial hours payments. The tiers for 2026/27 are set out in the next section. Step two is Income Tax: take your gross pay, subtract the pension contribution, subtract the £12,570 Personal Allowance, and charge 20% on the rest up to £50,270 of income, 40% above that, and 45% above £125,140. The Personal Allowance itself tapers by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000, so the highest-paid staff get less than £12,570 — the Band 9 rows in the table below show this in practice. Step three is National Insurance: charge 8% on gross earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% on anything above £50,270. Step four is student loan: 9% of gross pay above your plan's threshold — £26,900 on Plan 1, £29,385 on Plan 2, £33,795 on Plan 4, £25,000 on Plan 5, or 6% above £21,000 on a Postgraduate Loan.

The table below works the method through for every band and step, before student loan. Every figure is for England, using the England, Wales and Northern Ireland tax bands. Scotland sets its own Income Tax bands, so Scottish take-home pay will differ slightly.

These figures are before student loan repayments, salary sacrifice, additional pension contributions and any other deductions, and they use the England, Wales and Northern Ireland tax bands. National Insurance is worked out annually here; payroll works it out per pay period, so a month with a bonus or heavy overtime can differ slightly.

Read the table from the top and three patterns stand out. First, Income Tax is the biggest single deduction at every band, and the pension is the second biggest — but the pension grows faster than tax as pay rises, because the pension tier rises with pay while the tax rate stays at 20% until £50,270. At Band 5 entry the pension (£2,662.06) is nearly as large as the tax (£3,368.19); at Band 7 top the pension (£6,047.11) is still close to the tax (£7,619.16). Second, the higher-rate threshold bites at Band 7 top. At £56,515, £197.89 of income falls above £50,270 and is taxed at 40% instead of 20%, and National Insurance on the same slice drops from 8% to 2%. That is why the jump from Band 6 top to Band 7 top keeps less of each extra pound than the jumps lower down. Third, the top of the scale brings a different effect: at Band 9 the middle and top steps cross £100,000 of income after pension, so the Personal Allowance tapers — to £10,252 at the middle step and £5,790 at the top step — which is why the tax on those two rows is higher than a straight 20% and 40% split would suggest.

One more check, because trust matters more than arithmetic. Our own £40,000 after-tax tool publishes this result for a £40,000 salary in 2026/27: Income Tax £5,486.00, employee National Insurance £2,194.40, take-home pay £32,319.60 a year, or £2,693.30 a month, before pension and student loan. Working the same salary by hand from the GOV.UK rates gives exactly the same four figures — £5,486.00 of tax on £27,430 of taxable income, £2,194.40 of National Insurance on the same slice, and £32,319.60 left. The tool and the hand calculation agree to the penny, which is how it should be: the same rates, applied the same way, give the same answer. If a calculator you use elsewhere gives a different answer for the same salary, one of the two is using the wrong rates, the wrong order, or a different tax year.

Student loan is the deduction most people forget, and it is the one that varies most between two people on the same band. A Band 5 nurse at the top step on £39,043 with a Plan 2 loan repays 9% of the £9,658 above the £29,385 threshold, which is £869.22 a year, or £72.43 a month. The same nurse on Plan 5, with its lower £25,000 threshold, would repay 9% of £14,043, which is £1,263.87 a year. A colleague on the same ward with no loan repays nothing. The threshold is the key: nothing is due on income below it, and the repayment is only on the slice above it — never on the whole salary. Payroll works it out per pay period, so a month with overtime or a bank shift can trigger a deduction even if your basic salary sits close to the threshold.

Part-time staff need one extra step, and it is a pleasant surprise. Pension tiers are set by your actual pay, not your full-time equivalent pay, so part-time work can put you in a lower pension tier than a full-timer on the same band. A Band 5 nurse at the entry step working 0.6 of full-time — 22.5 hours a week — earns £19,243.80 a year. That falls in the 6.5% pension tier, not the 8.3% tier a full-timer pays, so the pension contribution is £1,250.85 a year. Income Tax is £1,084.59 and National Insurance is £533.90, leaving take-home pay of £16,374.46 a year, or £1,364.54 a month. The same logic works the other way for London weighting and unsocial hours: enhancements that push your actual pay over a tier boundary raise your pension rate on the whole of your pay, so a small pay rise can cost more in pension than you expect. Our pro-rata salary calculator will work out the gross figure for any part-time fraction, and the method above will take it the rest of the way.

How much pension do NHS staff pay in 2026/27?

NHS staff pay into the NHS Pension Scheme, a career average scheme in which each year earns a pension of one fifty-fourth of pensionable pay for that year, revalued over time. The employee contribution is tiered: six rates from 5.2% to 12.5% of pensionable pay in England and Wales, set by which band of actual annual pensionable pay you fall into. The employer contributes 23.7% on top, one of the highest employer rates anywhere in the UK. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own schemes with different tier structures, so the table below is for England and Wales.

The single most misunderstood fact about these tiers is that the rate applies to your whole pensionable pay, not just the slice above each threshold. A Band 5 nurse at the entry step on £32,073 sits in the 8.3% tier, so the contribution is 8.3% of the full £32,073 — £2,662.06 a year, or £221.84 a month — not 5.2% on the first slice and 6.5% on the next and 8.3% on the last. That creates a cliff edge at every boundary: a nurse whose pay rises from £35,100 to £35,200 crosses from 8.3% to 9.8%, and the extra 1.5% applies to the whole salary, not just the £100 over the line. Overtime, unsocial hours enhancements and London weighting can push you into a higher tier, because they count towards pensionable pay — the tier is set by your actual pay, not your basic salary alone.

What counts as pensionable is narrower than what counts as pay. Basic salary, London weighting and unsocial hours payments count. Overtime beyond full-time hours, bonuses and expenses do not. That distinction matters twice: once for the tier you land in, and once for the pension you build, because only pensionable pay earns the one fifty-fourth accrual. A nurse who regularly works overtime will see the overtime in take-home pay but not in the pension, and a nurse on a high unsocial hours rota will see both the enhancement in take-home pay and a higher pension contribution.

The cost is real money, and it is worth saying plainly what it buys. At Band 5 entry the £221.84 a month buys a defined benefit pension with an employer contributing 23.7% on top — £7,601.30 a year from the employer on a £32,073 salary. Few private-sector defined contribution schemes come close to a 23.7% employer contribution, and the pension is index-linked and payable for life. The trade is that the money is locked away until retirement, and the contribution is one of the largest deductions on most NHS payslips, second only to Income Tax at these bands. Whether that trade is good value depends on how long you stay in the scheme, which is a personal decision — but the arithmetic above is the same for everyone, and it is the arithmetic that decides what reaches your bank each month.

One practical check. Your pension tier is set by your actual pay, and it is reassessed when your pay changes. If your tier on your payslip does not match the table above for your actual pensionable pay, ask payroll — tier errors are one of the commonest NHS payslip mistakes, and they are usually fixed quickly once spotted. The section on checking your payslip, near the end of this guide, lists the other mistakes to look for. On top of the pension, your employer also pays employer National Insurance at 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year — the full cost of employing you is well above your salary, and our employer National Insurance calculator works out that side of the bill.

What is London weighting worth on NHS pay?

London weighting in the NHS is called the High Cost Area Supplement, and it is paid on top of basic salary for staff working in London and the surrounding fringe area. There are three rates, and each one is a percentage of basic salary subject to a minimum and a maximum payment. For 2026/27 the inner London rate is 20% of basic salary, with a minimum of £5,794 and a maximum of £8,746 a year. Outer London is 15%, with a minimum of £4,870 and a maximum of £6,137. The fringe zone is 5%, with a minimum of £1,346 and a maximum of £2,270.

The minimum and maximum are what make the supplement interesting. At the bottom of the scale the minimum lifts the payment above the percentage: a Band 2 member of staff on £25,272 would get 20% of basic salary in inner London, which is £5,054.40, but the minimum payment is £5,794, so they receive £5,794. At the top of the scale the maximum caps it: a Band 9 member of staff on £129,783 would get 20%, which is £25,956.60, but the maximum payment is £8,746, so they receive £8,746. The supplement is worth the most, in proportionate terms, to the lowest-paid staff, and the least, in proportionate terms, to the highest-paid.

For a Band 5 nurse the figures are straightforward. At the entry step the inner London salary is £38,488, the outer London salary is £36,943 and the fringe salary is £33,677, against £32,073 outside London. At the intermediate step the figures are £41,511, £39,781 and £36,322. At the top step they are £46,852, £44,900 and £40,996. One detail worth noticing: the outer London entry figure of £36,943 is not 15% above £32,073, which would be £36,884 — it is lifted by the £4,870 minimum payment, which applies instead. The minimum is what makes the supplement worth proportionally more at the bottom of the scale.

London weighting changes the take-home pay calculation in two ways, and both are easy to miss. First, the supplement is pensionable, so it pushes your actual pensionable pay up and can push you into a higher pension tier. A Band 5 nurse at the top step in inner London earns £46,852, which is still in the 9.8% pension tier, so the pension is £4,591.50 a year, Income Tax is £5,938.10 and National Insurance is £2,742.56, leaving take-home pay of £33,579.84 a year, or £2,798.32 a month. That is £417.52 a month more than the same nurse outside London — a real gain, but noticeably less than the £650.75 a month the gross supplement looks like, because tax, National Insurance and pension all take a share.

Second, the supplement is excluded from unsocial hours enhancements. Enhancements are calculated on basic salary only, so a night shift in inner London pays the same enhancement as a night shift in Newcastle, even though the basic pay is higher. That is a deliberate feature of the Agenda for Change rules, and it catches out staff who assume every element of pay scales together. If you are comparing a London post with a post elsewhere, compare the take-home figures, not the headline salaries — and remember that the supplement does not cover the higher cost of living in full for everyone, which is why some trusts add recruitment and retention premia on top for hard-to-fill roles.

How much is NHS overtime and unsocial hours pay?

NHS pay is not just the basic salary. A large part of many NHS payslips is unsocial hours pay — the enhancements paid for working nights, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays under Section 2 of the Agenda for Change handbook. The enhancement is a percentage added on top of your basic hourly rate, and the percentage depends on your band. The lower bands get the higher percentages, by design.

The unsocial periods are defined precisely: weekday nights run from 8pm to 6am, Monday to Friday; Saturdays count for all hours from midnight to midnight; and Sundays and public holidays count for all hours too. On a weekday, only the hours that actually fall between 8pm and 6am attract the enhancement — unless more than half of the whole shift falls in unsocial time, in which case the entire shift qualifies. Saturday, Sunday and public holiday shifts are enhanced for every hour worked.

Worked through, the percentages are worth real money. A Band 5 nurse at the top step earns £19.97 an hour basic. On a Saturday or a weekday night the rate is £19.97 plus 30%, which is £25.96 an hour. On a Sunday or a public holiday the rate is £19.97 plus 60%, which is £31.95 an hour. A 12-hour Sunday shift at the top of Band 5 is therefore worth £383.40 gross, against £239.64 for the same 12 hours on a weekday day shift. At the entry step, where the basic rate is £16.40 an hour, the night and Saturday rate is £21.32 an hour and the Sunday rate is £26.24 an hour. A Band 2 healthcare assistant on £12.92 an hour earns £18.22 an hour on a Saturday, because the Band 2 enhancement is 41% rather than 30%.

Two warnings belong here. First, several third-party calculator sites still quote the old pre-September 2018 rates for Bands 1 to 3 — 50%, 44% and 37% — which were superseded by the 2018 Agenda for Change framework agreement and are wrong for 2026/27. If a calculator gives you a Saturday rate that looks too generous at Band 2 or Band 3, check which set of percentages it is using. Second, enhancements are calculated on basic salary only. London weighting is excluded, as noted above, and so are any local allowances. If your payslip shows an enhancement worked out on your London-weighted salary, that is a mistake worth raising with payroll.

Overtime is paid at time and a half for Bands 1 to 7, or double time on public holidays. A Band 5 nurse at the top step working overtime on a weekday is therefore paid £29.96 an hour, and on a public holiday £39.94 an hour. Overtime and unsocial hours enhancements are never paid on the same hour: where both could apply, you receive the higher of the two rates, not both added together. A Sunday overtime hour at the top of Band 5 is paid at double time, £39.94, which beats the 60% Sunday enhancement of £31.95, and a weekday night overtime hour is paid at time and a half, £29.96, which beats the 30% night enhancement of £25.96. Staff on Bands 8 and 9 receive time off in lieu rather than paid overtime. Part-time staff working extra hours up to 37.5 in a week are paid at the plain rate for those hours — they are additional hours, not overtime — but the unsocial hours enhancement still applies to them where they fall in a qualifying window. Bank shifts — ad hoc shifts picked up through the trust's staff bank — attract the same unsocial hours percentages as contracted hours, which is why a Sunday bank shift is worth so much more than a Tuesday one. Agency staff working in the NHS through an agency are not on Agenda for Change terms at all: the agency sets the hourly rate, and agency work carries none of the NHS pension, sick pay or annual leave entitlements described in this guide. Whether that arrangement falls inside IR35 also affects how the pay is taxed, and our IR35 calculator explains how that test works. Our overtime calculator will work out the gross pay for any combination of hours and enhancements if you want to check a specific rota before you agree to it.

How much sick pay do NHS staff get?

NHS sick pay has two layers, and confusing them is the commonest mistake staff make when they fall ill. The first layer is Statutory Sick Pay, the legal minimum every employee gets. The second layer is NHS occupational sick pay, the more generous scheme under Section 14 of the Agenda for Change handbook. The statutory payment sits inside the occupational payment — it is not added on top.

Statutory Sick Pay changed more on 6 April 2026 than it had in years. From that date it is £123.25 a week, or 80% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower, for up to 28 weeks. It is paid from your first full day off sick — the three unpaid waiting days are gone — and there is no longer any minimum earnings level to qualify. The 80% rule only bites if you earn less than £154.06 a week on average: above that you receive the full £123.25, below it you receive 80% of your actual pay. For someone who works five days a week the daily rate is £24.65. The old rate, £118.75 a week in 2025/26, no longer applies to absences starting on or after 6 April 2026. Our SSP calculator follows the 2026/27 rules and will work out the daily rate for any pattern of qualifying days.

Occupational sick pay is far more generous, and it grows with your length of service. The entitlement is measured on a rolling 12-month basis, so sick pay taken in the previous year comes off what you have left, and previous NHS service counts if the break between posts was 12 months or less. Pregnancy-related sickness and injury at work are excluded from the rolling calculation.

Full pay means your normal salary including contractual enhancements and London weighting, with Statutory Sick Pay included inside it rather than added on top. Half pay means 50% of your normal salary, but never less than the Statutory Sick Pay rate — so during half pay you receive whichever is higher, half your salary or £123.25 a week. After occupational sick pay ends, Statutory Sick Pay continues on its own for up to 28 weeks in total from the start of the absence.

A worked example makes the difference concrete. A Band 5 nurse at the entry step on £32,073, with three years of NHS service, who is off sick for five months receives five months at full pay — roughly £2,672.75 a month gross — and would then move to half pay, roughly £1,336.38 a month gross, for up to five more months, subject to the £123.25-a-week floor. The same nurse in their first year would receive one month at full pay and two months at half pay, and then Statutory Sick Pay alone. The gap between those two positions is the reason length of service matters so much in the NHS, and why keeping a record of your service history — including earlier posts with other NHS organisations — is worth doing before you need it.

For managers and payroll staff, the record-keeping side matters too: return-to-work interviews, Bradford Factor scores and the rolling 12-month calculation all depend on accurate absence records. If you are off sick, tell your employer promptly, keep your fit notes, and check your payslip against the table above — occupational sick pay errors are rare, but when they happen they are usually a service-length error, and service length is something you can prove from your own employment history.

What about NHS maternity and paternity pay?

NHS maternity pay is one of the most generous occupational schemes in UK employment, and it runs in four stages across the year. With 12 months of continuous NHS service by the beginning of the 11th week before your baby is due, and an intention to return to NHS employment for at least three months afterwards, you receive 8 weeks at full pay, then 18 weeks at half pay plus Statutory Maternity Pay, then 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay only, and finally 13 weeks unpaid. That is 52 weeks of leave in total: 26 weeks of ordinary maternity leave followed by 26 weeks of additional maternity leave.

The worked example for a Band 5 nurse at the entry step on £32,073 shows how the stages feel in practice. Weekly pay is £32,073 divided by 52, which is £616.79 a week. For weeks 1 to 8 she receives £616.79 a week. For weeks 9 to 26 she receives half pay of £308.39 a week plus Statutory Maternity Pay at the 2026/27 standard rate of £194.32 a week, which is £502.71 a week — capped so that half pay plus Statutory Maternity Pay never exceeds full pay, which it does not here. For weeks 27 to 39 she receives £194.32 a week. For weeks 40 to 52 she receives nothing. The income drops sharply after the first two months, right when a new baby is most expensive, which is why some trusts, on request, spread the same total in equal monthly instalments across the whole leave instead of following the weekly stages — ask your trust's payroll team whether yours offers this.

Two conditions catch people out. First, the 12 months of service are counted to the 11th week before the expected week of childbirth, not to the due date — about three months earlier than most people assume. Service with other NHS employers counts towards the 12 months, as long as no break between jobs is longer than three months. Second, the occupational top-up must be repaid if you do not return to NHS employment for at least three months, so the decision to return is a financial one as well as a personal one. If you do not meet the service test, you still get 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave, and Statutory Maternity Pay on its own for 39 weeks if you meet the statutory test — 26 weeks of continuous service with the same employer into the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth, with average weekly earnings of at least £129.

Paternity pay is simpler and shorter. Statutory Paternity Pay is paid at the same £194.32 a week standard rate for 2026/27, for one or two weeks, and the claim runs through the SC3 form — our SC3 form guide explains who fills it in, the deadlines and how to complete it, and our paternity pay calculator will work out the weekly figure for any salary. NHS occupational paternity provisions sit on top of the statutory minimum in some trusts, so check your local policy. Our NHS maternity pay calculator works out the full four-stage maternity calculation for any band and salary, week by week, if you want the exact figures for your own circumstances rather than the Band 5 example above.

How much annual leave do NHS staff get?

Agenda for Change gives more annual leave than the legal minimum, and the entitlement grows with reckonable NHS service — service with any NHS organisation, not just your current trust. For a full-time member of staff working 37.5 hours a week, the entitlement is 27 days on appointment, rising to 29 days after five years of service and 33 days after ten years, plus 8 general public holidays on top. The legal minimum for most UK workers is 5.6 weeks, capped at 28 days, so even the starting NHS entitlement is close to the cap before bank holidays are added.

Part-time staff receive the same entitlement pro rata, worked out in hours rather than days. A full-time day is 7.5 hours, so 27 days is 202.5 hours and the 8 bank holidays are 60 hours. A member of staff working 30 hours a week — 0.8 of full-time — with under five years of service is therefore entitled to 162 hours of annual leave plus 48 hours of bank holiday entitlement. Part-time staff take any public holidays they would normally work as annual leave, and their pro-rated bank holiday entitlement is added to their annual leave. Our annual leave calculator works the hours out for any contracted hours and service length, including part of a leave year for joiners and leavers.

Two details are worth knowing. First, the leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March, and entitlement accrues day by day across it — so if you leave the NHS part-way through the year, you are paid for the leave you have accrued but not taken, worked out in hours at your normal rate. The notice you must give when you leave depends on your contract and your length of service, and our notice period calculator works out the dates.

Second, Wales gives staff one extra day on appointment — 28 days rather than 27 — under a Welsh variation of the handbook, so check your health board's wording if you work in Wales. Individual trusts may also have local policies on carrying leave over, which the national handbook leaves to local agreement.

How do you check your NHS payslip?

Your payslip is the one document that proves what you were actually paid, and it is worth reading properly at least once — most NHS pay errors are spotted by the member of staff, not by payroll. Start with the basics: your name, your payroll number, your tax code and your National Insurance number. The standard tax code for 2026/27 is 1257L, which gives you the full £12,570 Personal Allowance. If your code is different — because of a second job, benefits in kind, or an underpayment from an earlier year — your tax will be different from the figures in this guide, and that is usually the explanation when take-home pay does not match the worked examples.

Next, check the pay itself. Your basic pay should match your band and step from the table near the top of this guide, plus London weighting if it applies. Enhancements should be shown separately, with the hours and the rate, so you can check a night or Sunday shift against the percentages in the unsocial hours section. Your pension contribution should match your tier from the pension table, on your actual pensionable pay — and remember that the tier is set by actual pay, so overtime and enhancements that push you over a boundary change the rate on the whole salary. Student loan should appear only if your pay is above your plan's threshold, at 9% of the slice above it.

The commonest mistakes, in the order payroll staff report them, are: a pension tier set from full-time equivalent pay instead of actual pay, which overcharges part-time staff; London weighting missing after a move between trusts; enhancements calculated on London-weighted pay instead of basic pay; a tax code carried over from a previous job; and a pay step not applied when progression was due. None of these is hard to fix once spotted, and all of them are easier to spot in the first month than a year later. If something looks wrong, raise it with payroll with the payslip in front of you and the handbook paragraph that applies — Section 2 for unsocial hours, Section 13 for leave, Section 14 for sick pay, Section 15 for maternity pay. Our payslip generator shows what a correct UK payslip looks like, line by line, and our tax code checker explains what each tax code means and when to query it.

One more check, for the end of the tax year. Your P60, issued after 5 April, shows your total pay and total tax for the year. Compare the tax on the P60 with the tax in the worked examples for your salary — if you changed bands, worked significant overtime, or had a period of sick pay or maternity pay during the year, the figures will not match a simple annual calculation, because payroll works tax out per pay period and the year-end position can differ. A large difference, in either direction, is worth a query before you accept it.

When does NHS pay go up next?

NHS pay is reviewed every year. The independent NHS Pay Review Body takes evidence from the government, NHS Employers, the unions and others, recommends a rise, and the government decides whether to accept it. The 2026/27 award was 3.3% in England and Wales, accepted on 12 February 2026 and paid from 1 April 2026 — on time, in April salaries, which was the first on-time award since 2020. Scotland agreed a separate 3.75% deal for 2026/27 as the second year of a two-year agreement. Northern Ireland's 2026/27 award had not been confirmed when the scales were published.

The next award, for 2027/28, will follow the same cycle: evidence in the winter, a recommendation in the spring, and a decision before the new pay year starts on 1 April 2027. What it will be worth is genuinely unknowable in advance — it depends on inflation, government spending decisions and the review body's judgement — and any website that tells you the figure now is guessing. What you can do is watch for three things: the review body's report, the government's response, and the date the new scales are published by NHS Employers. This guide will be updated when the 2027/28 scales are published, and the worked examples will be re-done from the new figures.

In the meantime, the two things that raise your NHS pay without waiting for the annual award are pay progression and promotion. Progression to the next step in your band is worth roughly £1,700 to £10,200 a year gross, depending on the band and the step — at Band 5 the move from the intermediate step to the top step is worth £4,451 a year, and at Band 9 the move from the middle step to the top is worth £10,200 — and it depends on meeting the requirements for your role, so keep a record of your training and appraisals, because they are the evidence. Promotion to the next band is worth more, but it means a different post, with a different job evaluation score. Neither depends on the pay review body, and both are in your hands in a way the annual award is not.

How can you check your exact take-home pay?

Work through the method in this guide for your own band and step, then check the result against your payslip. The tables above give you the answer for every band already worked out; the method gives you the answer for any other combination — a London supplement, a part-time fraction, or a month with overtime.

If you want the same calculation done for any UK salary, with the working shown line by line, our take-home pay guide is the next page to read. It explains the UK Income Tax bands and National Insurance rates for 2026/27, works through salaries from £20,000 to £125,140, and links to the calculators for the figures this guide uses.