NHS Agenda for Change Pay Scales 2026/27

Agenda for Change (AfC) is the pay system that covers roughly 1.5 million NHS staff — everyone from healthcare assistants and administrators through to nurses, paramedics, allied health professionals, scientists and senior NHS managers (doctors and dentists are paid under a separate contract). It works as a set of bands, each with several pay points you move through, usually one a year, until you reach the top of your band. This page sets out every band and pay point for 2026/27 for England, Wales and Scotland, sourced directly from official pay circulars and kept in sync as new figures are confirmed. Northern Ireland follows the England table when its award is implemented.

New to the term? Start with what Agenda for Change is and how NHS pay bands work, then use the tables below.

To see what the 2026/27 rise is worth to you after tax, National Insurance and pension, use the free NHS Pay Rise Calculator.

England (and Northern Ireland): full 2026/27 pay scale

The table below shows every Agenda for Change band from 1 to 9, with the annual salary at each pay point after the 3.3% uplift is applied, as published by NHS Employers for England. Northern Ireland has historically restored parity with England, so this is the table its staff will be moved onto once its award is implemented (as of late August 2026 it had not been). Wales has its own table, below.

* Estimated / interpolated intermediate point — see the note below.

Wales: full 2026/27 pay scale

Wales sets its own Agenda for Change pay scales. The 3.3% award was applied to the 2025/26 Welsh scales, but the lowest bands had already been raised to the Living Wage Foundation rate (so they did not get the 3.3% on top), which is why the Welsh Band 2 is a single point of £26,300 and the lowest bands start higher than in England. The figures below are the latest published Welsh Government table (pay letter AfC(W) 02/2026 and its 1 June 2026 correction to the Band 3 entry point, available from NHS Wales). Welsh Government has said talks on Agenda for Change structure are continuing, so check for any later circular.

High Cost Area Supplements (HCAS) 2026/27

If you work in or around London, your basic Agenda for Change salary is topped up by a High Cost Area Supplement — a percentage addition to reflect the higher cost of living, subject to a minimum and maximum cash amount so it doesn't become disproportionately large at the top of high bands or negligible at the bottom.

HCAS is paid on top of your basic Agenda for Change salary at whatever band and point you're on — it isn't a separate pay scale, and it isn't available to staff working outside these designated areas, wherever else they are in the country. Wales, Northern Ireland and the rest of England outside London and its fringe do not attract HCAS. If you've seen this called "London Weighting" instead, see our London Weighting vs HCAS guide for why that's the older, informal term rather than the current one. Outside HCAS areas, an employer can still pay above the standard rate for a genuinely hard-to-fill post through a Recruitment and Retention Premium — a different, discretionary mechanism covered in full in its own guide.

NHS Scotland: full 2026/27 pay scale

NHS Scotland negotiates its own pay deal separately from the rest of the UK, and has done so more assertively since a 2018 restructuring of its pay spine. That means Scottish Agenda for Change rates need their own table — you can't simply apply the England uplift percentage to Scottish figures and get the right number.

Why do the figures differ from England?

Two things are going on. First, Scotland's 2018 pay deal restructured the spine into fewer, larger pay points per band — a Band 5 nurse in Scotland moves through 3 points, for example, the same count as England, but the jump between them can be bigger in percentage terms because there are fewer steps covering the same overall band range. Second, Scotland runs its own annual pay negotiation — for 2026/27 that's a confirmed 3.75% uplift as the second year of a two-year deal, on top of a 2025/26 rate that itself included a CPI "inflation guarantee" top-up when inflation ran ahead of the baseline offer. That's a genuinely different negotiating history from the England and Wales 3.3% figure, not a rounding difference — the two numbers happen to be close in percentage terms for 2026/27, but they come from separate deals and there's no guarantee they'll stay close in future years.

What each band actually means

Band numbers alone don't tell you much unless you know what kind of role typically sits at each level. Using the same descriptions from the official pay scale itself, here's roughly how seniority and experience map onto the Agenda for Change bands across the UK:

Broadly, Bands 2–4 are entry-level and support roles that don't require professional registration; Band 5 is where most newly qualified, degree-registered clinical professionals start their career; Bands 6–7 are where specialisation and first-line leadership sit; and Band 8a upward covers senior management, advanced clinical practice and executive roles. Moving along a band (point to point) typically happens automatically each year subject to satisfactory performance; moving up a band requires applying for and being appointed to a higher-banded post — there's no service-length escalator that promotes you automatically.

How your total pay is actually built

The band and point figures above are your basic salary — for many NHS staff, especially those working a genuine mix of nights, weekends and bank holidays, that's not the same as take-home pay. Unsocial hours enhancements, on-call payments, and HCAS where applicable can add a meaningful amount on top of the basic rate. If you're trying to work out what a specific role actually pays in practice, it's worth looking at how pay works within your own profession — see our guides to nursing pay and bands, medicine and resident doctor pay, and paramedic pay and bands — as well as our breakdown of exactly what was confirmed in the 2026/27 pay rise and how it reached this 3.3% figure. Pay isn't the only number that matters for your total reward, either — see our guide to the NHS Pension Scheme (2015 section) for how much of your package sits outside your salary altogether.

Want to see what your band could mean for a mortgage? Run it through the NHS Mortgage Calculator.

How your band is actually decided — and what to do if you think it's wrong

The band and point figures above look like a simple lookup table, but behind every Agenda for Change post is a formal process that decided which band it belongs to in the first place — and that process matters if you ever think your own role has been placed on the wrong band.

• Every post is scored, not guessed. The NHS Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) is the nationally agreed method used to band a role. It scores the job description against a set of weighted factors — covering things like the knowledge and skills needed, the level of responsibility for patients, resources, information or people, physical and mental effort, and working conditions — and the total score determines the band. It's a structured, documented process, not a subjective judgement by a single manager.
• The JES evaluates the job, not the person. This is the single most misunderstood part of banding. Two people with wildly different levels of experience, both doing the same job description, sit on the same band — experience and skill are reflected by which pay point you're on within the band (and by which posts you're eligible to apply for), not by moving you to a different band for doing your existing job especially well.
• Job descriptions drift, and banding should catch up. Roles evolve — a post can quietly pick up extra responsibility, a wider scope, or duties well beyond what the original job description covered, often gradually enough that nobody formally notices. If you believe your day-to-day duties no longer match your banded job description, that's the trigger for a formal job re-evaluation or banding review request through your trust's HR or Agenda for Change team — not something to raise informally and hope it resolves itself.
• There's a defined route if you disagree with the outcome. Most trusts run a local job matching or full re-evaluation panel to consider a review request, and a formal appeals process if you disagree with the result. If a re-evaluation confirms a higher band, the change is typically backdated to when the request was formally raised (the exact backdating point varies by trust policy, so confirm it locally) — which is one more reason not to sit on a genuine banding concern. A union rep is usually well placed to help navigate this, since banding reviews and appeals are something they support members through regularly.

Why you can rely on the figures on this page

• ✓ Every confirmed figure is taken directly from officially published NHS pay tables and circulars for England, Wales and Scotland — not a third-party estimate
• ✓ Any figure we couldn't yet confirm officially is clearly marked with an asterisk and explained in the note above, rather than presented as fact
• ✓ This page is dated and rebuilt whenever a new pay award, HCAS rate or spine-point table is confirmed, so you're not reading a figure that quietly went stale
• ✓ We link out to nhsemployers.org directly wherever you might want to verify a specific number yourself, rather than asking you to just take our word for it