The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has confirmed he will accept the recommendation of the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) for a 3.3% pay increase for Agenda for Change (AfC) staff in the 2026/27 pay awards. The award will be effective from April 1, 2026.
Whilst the timely nature of this year’s announcement has been welcomed by unions and industry leaders, the level of the award and the process itself has not.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which includes NHS England, missed the deadline to submit written evidence, which was set some two months earlier than the previous year. The PRB report was submitted to governments on February 5, almost eight weeks before April 1, and almost three months before the April pay date. The PRB has repeatedly commented on the importance of the AfC pay award being implemented on time, and believes the prompt timing of this year’s recommendation means this may be possible. It urges all governments to make this happen.
Rory Deighton, Acute and Community Care Director speaking on behalf of NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, says: “Health leaders will welcome the government’s confirmation of a pay award for all NHS Agenda for Change (AfC) staff in time for April given that for many years this has not happened before the start of the new financial year. NHS staff are the backbone of the health service and work hard to deliver high-quality patient care.
“While NHS leaders will be pleased that the Health Secretary has confirmed that the funding gap will be closed through central budgets given the reaction from the health unions representing NHS AfC staff, they will be concerned this does not go far enough to ward off the threat of further industrial action.”
Boycott for change
All but one of the trade unions representing Agenda for Change, along with a number of other organisations, declined to provide evidence to the PRB this year. Last September, UNISON said the PRB process had “exceeded its shelf life,” and NHS Providers described the decision of unions not to engage with the process as a “wake-up call for national NHS leaders.”
Commenting on the PRB recommendation, UNISON head of health Helga Pile says: “It’s now 18 months since the government promised to set up talks to reform the Agenda for Change pay structure. Yet nothing’s changed and staff are fed up with hearing there will be jam tomorrow.
“Ministers should have done the right thing when health unions wrote to them last September. Unions wanted the hopeless pay review body process ditched in favour of direct talks to fix pay and structure at the same time.”
Rachel Harrison, GMB National Secretary adds: "This award is just not enough to make up for more than a decade of pay cuts under the Tories. NHS workers deserve more and GMB will fight for that at the long overdue agenda for change structural talks we have now been promised.
"GMB reps will now meet to discuss the pay award and determine next steps."
