NHS staff set to win 6.5% pay rise but must forfeit day's holiday in return

The government is set to offer around 1 million NHS staff a 6.5% pay rise over the next three years but is insisting that health workers give up a day’s holiday in return for the £3.3bn deal.

Ministers hope they are close to finalising a package to give NHS personnel in England their first meaningful pay rise since 2010, after months of behind-the-scenes talks with union leaders.

The Treasury and Department of Health and Social Care plan to propose that all non-medical NHS staff in England receive a 3% increase in their salary in 2018-19 – the current rate of inflation – and then rises of 1%-2% in the following two years. Nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants, ambulance staff and all other workers except doctors and dentists would benefit from the scrapping of the hated pay cap. Doctors and dentists have a separate pay review system.

The deal the government is preparing to formally put to staff later this month would also see some NHS personnel get pay rises of 10% and, in certain circumstances, well above that by 2021. Those on the bottom of the NHS’s nine pay scales would get a bigger uplift under Agenda for Change – the agreement that governs the earnings of health service staff – than colleagues who earn more because they are higher up that pay band.

Source: theguardian