What The Proposed 1% Pay Rise Means For NHS Nurses

The Department of Health and Social Care has submitted a proposed pay rise recommendation to the NHS pay review body of just 1%. What does this mean?

*Please note, this article was written before the 3% pay rise was confirmed in July 2021.

Along with a number of significant announcements in Rishi Sunak’s budget, the news NHS Nurses have been waiting for has also been revealed.

The Department of Health and Social Care has submitted a proposed pay rise recommendation to the NHS pay review body of just 1%.

It’s important to note that this is only a recommendation at this point – the pay rise for the 2021-2022 year will be formally decided in May.

Until then, Nursing salaries in the NHS remain unchanged.

But nonetheless, the announcement has been met with an enormous backlash from politicians and unions, many of whom have described the rise to be ‘an insult’.

It will certainly come as a surprise to those Nurses who have been heralded for working at the very frontline of the Covid pandemic, like ICU Nurse, Emma Keane, in this article.

How Much More Would A Nurse Be Paid With A 1% Increase?

To give a sense of what a 1% rise looks like here's how much Nurses in a few different bandings would see their pay increase by each week:

• A Band 5 Nurse with a few years’ experience would take home around £4.20 a week more

• A Band 6 Nurse with between 3 and 7 years’ experience would take home around £5.10 a week more

• A Band 7 Nurse with a similar amount of experience would take home around £6.15 a week more

To explain that in terms of responsibilities:

• Band 5 and 6 = this will include the kind of Nurses seen in PPE working on Covid wards. (You can read stories by such Nurses in this section of Nurses.co.uk)

• Band 7 = typically requiring a Master’s level degree or equivalent. Nursing job titles include Advanced Nurse Practitioners.

‘An Enormous Slap In The Face’

Unite’s assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail has summed up the mood by calling this pay rise ‘an enormous slap in the face’.

It’s also been revealed that a £35 million fund has been established to support strike action over the proposed increase. You can also read about What Do Social Workers In The UK Get Paid In 2022?

The NHS Pay Calculator

Find out what your NHS take-home pay is using our handy calculator!

The Royal College of Nursing had argued for a 12.5% increase, so inevitably this announcement has been heavily criticised.

However, the issue surrounding the salary increase is complex.

A Real-Terms Pay Cut?

Many public sector workers, including teachers, are about to have their pay frozen for a year, and the government’s coffers are at an unparalleled low because of the financial impact of Covid-19.

However, many critics of this proposed pay rise have highlighted the fact that this would represent a ‘real-terms’ cut in wages.

Real-terms describes the amount of money you earn in relation to average living costs, and with many living costs rising annually, a 1% rise doesn’t do enough to soften the blow.

Experts are torn on this subject, because inflation – which is a big contributing factor in rising living costs – remains extremely low.

Low inflation, they suggest, means lower living costs.

But the fallout from Covid-19 and Brexit could change that – and end up highlighting how insufficient a pay increase of 1% really is.

Whatever happens, it’s fair to say that nothing has been decided yet – and that the battle over NHS pay rises has only just begun. You can also read about the nursing pay guide.