The public sector, including teachers, nurses, prison officers and civil servants as well as members of the military, has offered pay increases above inflation of between 3.25 and 4.5%.
The government had previously budgeted 2.8% but accepted the recommendations of pay review bodies that were higher. The unions had claimed that 2.8% was a low number.
Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said he accepted the pay recommendations from the NHS Pay Review Body. (NHSPRB), Review Body on Doctors and Dentists Remunerations (DDRB), and Senior Salaries Review Body. The “awards” are above the forecast inflation for the 2025-26 year. This means that the government has provided a real-terms increase on top of last year’s.
Nurses and other staff working in health care on contracts under Agenda for Change will receive 3.6%, while doctors and resident doctors (formerly junior physicians) will get 5.4%.
Streeting admitted that in order to maintain financial responsibility, “difficult choices” would have to be made on other spending areas to pay for these increases.
The unions complained that the salary increases did not bring it back to its previous value.
Professor Nicola Ranger of the Royal College of Nursing warned last week about a possible strike by nurses. She responded to the 3.6% increase by saying: “It’s a grotesque choice to once again favor doctor colleagues with higher increases than nurses and the rest NHS.”
Residents doctors in England have already announced dates to vote on new strikes and industrial actions over pay.
The British Medical Association resident doctor committee announced earlier this month that it had decided to ballot its members on strike action. The ballot is set to begin on 27 May, and end on 7 July.
The British Dental Association criticised the deal, saying that the 4% offered to dentists was not enough to “stop the exodus of NHS dentistry”.
Shabana Mahmood said that she did not accept the recommendation of the Senior Salaries Review Body despite admitting the recruitment and retention problems in the judiciary. Mahmood stated that judges would only receive 4% of their current pay in 2025-2026. The Senior Salaries Review Body recommended a 4.75% increase. She explained that this “responds to the SSRB’s recommendations and manages my department’s overall affordability”. Prison officers will also receive 4%, in accordance with the recommendation of the Prison Service Pay Review Body.
The award will improve recruitment and retention of teachers and recognise the importance of teachers to our society” – Jack Worth NFER
Bridget Phillipson is the Education Secretary. She said that teachers will receive a 4% increase in pay, but they would be required to cover a quarter from their budgets. This would be funded by an additional PS615million, which was made available. She stated that teachers’ salaries have increased by almost 10% and 22% since the government came to power.
Jack Worth, the National Foundation for Educational Research’s school workforce leader, welcomed the 4% award, saying that it “recognizes the importance of teachers in society and will improve teacher recruitment, retention, and retention”.
He cautioned, however, that forcing schools to find efficiencies in order to fund a portion of this salary increase would add to the already tight budgets for schools.
We encourage the government to allocate additional funds to schools during the next budget review to fulfill the 6,500-teacher pledge and to support schools in providing a high quality education to all pupils.
Worth said he was also happy to see the additional PS160m allocated to further education colleges and providers. “This could allow FE teacher salaries to keep up with teacher salaries and avoid falling behind in competition than they already are.”
Armed forces members have received a 4.5% pay rise. They received their biggest pay increase in 22 year last year, a 6% rise.
Civil servants, including those in ministerial and non-ministerial agencies, departments, nondepartmental public entities, and arms-length bodies, have been offered 3.25%. PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote stated: “While we were able to change the government’s original proposal from 2.8% to 3.25%, we are disappointed by the headline figure as inflation is now at 3.5%.
The Labour Party ended a long-running strike in the public sector last summer when it accepted recommended pay increases between 4.75% to 6%. This led to accusations by the Conservative opposition, that they had lost their control over public sector pay.
Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary, did not mention the specific claims and awards of different groups of workers. Instead he said: “Unions are willing to work with government to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis that is gripping our public service.” The crisis is the result of 14 years’ worth of Conservative mismanagement, and deliberate underinvestment.
This means bringing together all the stakeholders to create workforce plans for each area of the public service.
Ministers must speak directly with unions about the reasons why experienced and dedicated public servants quit their jobs.
“And we also need a long-term, clearly agreed strategy to improve the pay in the public sector, along with other important issues, such as improved working hours, better workload management, and enhanced flexibility working options.”
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