NHS GP Pay 2026/27 and the 2.4% Planned for 2027/28

To see what a salaried or trainee GP actually takes home after tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan, try our free NHS GP take-home pay calculator.

If you've read our doctors' careers and pay overview, you'll know that GPs branch off after Foundation training into a genuinely different career and pay structure from hospital medicine — one that doesn't fit neatly onto a single nodal point or Agenda for Change band. This page goes into that structure properly: the actual salaried GP pay range for 2026/27, why GP partner income can only ever be described as an average rather than a scale, how GPST trainee pay fits in, and what's realistically known (and not known) about locum GP rates.

Salaried GP pay: the 2026/27 range

Salaried GPs are employed directly by a GP practice (or, less commonly, a Primary Care Network or federation) on a contract broadly modelled on the BMA's salaried GP model contract. Unlike Agenda for Change or the resident doctor nodal points, there isn't a single fixed national salary for a given experience level — instead, the BMA publishes a recommended pay range each year, uplifted in line with the government's response to the DDRB's GP pay recommendation, and each practice sets the actual salary it offers within that range through individual negotiation.

A "session" is half a working day (roughly 4 hours 10 minutes of clinical and admin time), and most full-time GP roles are built around 8-9 sessions a week — which is also why GP pay is so often quoted per session rather than purely as an annual figure: it's a genuinely useful way to compare part-time and full-time roles on the same footing. Where an individual salaried GP actually sits within the range depends on experience, additional responsibilities (like a clinical lead or training role), and straightforward negotiation with the practice — there's no automatic progression through fixed points the way there is on an Agenda for Change band.

GP partner drawings: why there's no single figure

This is the part of GP pay that most general "NHS salary" content gets wrong by omission: a GP partner is not salaried. Partners are self-employed business owners who hold a share in their practice, and their income is their share of whatever the practice's profit is after paying its expenses — staff wages, premises, equipment, and everything else a small business has to cover — for that year. This is universally referred to as drawings, and it's fundamentally a different kind of number from a salary: it moves with the practice's whole financial performance, not with a fixed pay point.

The most recent official data on what this actually produces comes from NHS England Digital's GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates, built from HMRC Self Assessment tax records — the closest thing to an authoritative, whole-population figure that exists for GP income, since no employer payroll system captures self-employed partner drawings the way it captures a salary.

GP trainee (GPST) pay: on the resident doctor scale, not here

It's worth being explicit about this because it's a common point of confusion: GP Specialty Training (GPST) doctors are resident doctors during their three years of GP training, paid on exactly the same nodal-point scale as any other specialty trainee — not on the salaried GP range and nothing to do with partner drawings, both of which only apply once training is complete.

GPST trainees in England can also receive weekend, night and on-call pay on top of that basic pay during hospital and out-of-hours placements, on the same rota basis as any other resident doctor on the 2016 contract. See our full NHS doctor pay scales guide for the complete nodal-point table and how allowances combine with basic pay, and our doctors' careers and pay overview for where GP training sits in the wider medical career ladder.

Regional and practice-type variation

GP pay varies geographically and structurally in ways that don't show up in a single national figure:

• • Region — salaried GP pay negotiated locally tends to run higher in London and the South East, reflecting both cost of living and recruitment pressure in those areas, though this isn't captured in a separate national scale the way Agenda for Change's High Cost Area Supplement is
• • Contract type — practices hold GMS (General Medical Services), PMS (Personal Medical Services) or APMS (Alternative Provider Medical Services) contracts with NHS England, and funding mechanics differ enough between them to materially affect what's left over for partner drawings
• • Patient list size and demographics — core NHS funding is weighted by list size and factors like patient age and deprivation, so two practices of very different sizes or patient populations can have very different income even before costs are considered
• • Dispensing status — dispensing practices (typically in more rural areas without a nearby pharmacy) earn additional income from dispensing medicines directly, which can materially increase partner profit share compared with a non-dispensing practice

Locum GP rates: no official tariff exists

Locum GPs are self-employed and typically paid per session for cover they provide, but there is genuinely no official BMA or NHS rate card for this work — the BMA explicitly does not recommend rates for self-employed locums, partly because independent contractors collectively agreeing a common rate can raise competition law concerns. That means any "typical rate" you see quoted, including the range below, is a market-reported indication rather than an authoritative figure.

Why you can rely on the figures on this page

• ✓ Salaried GP pay range is taken directly from the BMA's published salaried GP pay ranges, not a third-party estimate
• ✓ GP partner and salaried GP earnings are from NHS England Digital's official GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates, built from HMRC Self Assessment tax records — the most authoritative whole-population source available, though the latest published year (2023/24) inevitably lags the current one
• ✓ GPST trainee pay is cross-referenced against the same nodal-point data used on our doctors' pay guide, not a separate estimate
• ✓ We're explicit that no official locum GP rate card exists, and label our locum figure as a market-reported indication rather than presenting it with false precision

Related NHS pay guides & tools

Where to go next

For the wider medical career ladder — Foundation training, specialty training, SAS doctors and consultants, alongside where GP training branches off — see our doctors' careers and pay overview. If you're specifically weighing salaried employment against partnership, both routes build NHS Pension in broadly the same CARE scheme, so our NHS Pension Scheme (2015) explained guide is worth reading before assuming the two options are equivalent from a pension perspective as well as a pay one. A strong practice-profit year can also affect your Annual Allowance position, which our annual allowance calculator estimates from your opening and closing pension figures.