Staff in Agenda for Change pay bands 1, 2 and band 3 entry are to receive an advance to the 2025/26 pay award from April 1. The move is to ensure compliance with the uplifted National Living Wage rates for staff in bands 1 (closed) and 2, with the uplift for band 3 entry awarded to maintain the differential with the top of band 2. The interim pay boost amounts to 28p per hour.
The announcement was made at the end of last week. Earlier in the week, UNISON, the largest union in the NHS and ambulance sector, said it was urging healthcare workers to write to their local MPs, asking them to call on Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting to open immediate talks between unions and NHS employers. The pay talks, to solve the problems associated with Agenda for Change, were promised in July but have yet to begin. Furthermore, the government has handed responsibility for looking at ways to improve Agenda for Change to the pay review body.
Commenting on the announcement, UNISON Head of Health Helga Pile says: “Ministers have to move away from the glacial pay review body process that’s unable to keep up with the 1 April date each year when staff are due their annual wage increase.
“NHS workers, unions and employers expected to see the government make good on promised direct talks in the current financial year so low pay issues could be resolved properly, by modernising wage bands.
“A system that grinds along needing emergency action every year to correct illegal wages is clearly not working. That does nothing to help morale or make essential workers feel valued because of successive government failures to sort out low pay for good. It also means that when the annual pay rise does come, the staff on the lowest bands will be little or no better off.
“The annual farce of having to raise the lowest hourly rates to avoid the NHS paying illegal wages is not helping recruitment either. Health services remain many thousands of workers short, yet staff are key to getting the NHS back on its feet. Recruitment rates won’t rise if the lowest wages continue to hover barely above the legal minimum.”
