NHS Employers: fix NHS pay review timetable

In its evidence to the Pay Review Body and the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Pay Review Body, it called for a sustainable longer-term financial settlement for the NHS, while welcoming the £3.3bn revenue increase from last year’s autumn statement.

But it warned of the multiple challenges facing employers in a very competitive labour market with other sectors offering competitive reward packages and NHS staff seeing the pay deal in 2018 eroded by inflation, the freezing of tax thresholds and increases in pension contributions for lower paid staff. This could particularly impact on lower banded NHS staff with many employers outside the NHS offering the ‘real living wage’ that is higher than the bottom rung of Agenda for Change. 

It called for any pay deal to be fully funded to prevent money having to be found from existing budgets to cover it.

The timetable for pay rounds needed to be returned to normal, enabling a return to prompt payment of increases, it said. Late payment led to additional administrative burdens on employers as well as affecting staff, especially in times of high inflation.

It said that, despite a growth in new doctors, there were still concerns about the number leaving and much of the growth in some areas of the workforce had come from international medical graduates.  

And it called for the annual pensions allowance to be scrapped for public sector workers,  adding that employers report staff taking early retirement, reducing work commitments and being reluctant to take promotions or extra work because of the tax impact.

The call to get the pay award timetable back on track came as it was revealed the Department of Health and Social Care had still not submitted its evidence to the Pay Review Body three weeks after the deadline. Chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee Steve Brine (pictured) said he was ‘astonished’ by this, given the government’s current backing for the review body process. The government has refused to discuss an increased pay settlement, arguing that it had accepted the review body's recommendation in full. Pay Review Body chair Philippa Hird said the body did have some government evidence – from the Treasury – but had not received a submission yet from the Department.

NHS England, in its evidence to the review body – delivered earlier in January but published this week – said the failure to fully fund the pay award in 2022/23 had created a recurrent pay inflation pressure, which was met by reducing support for technology and new diagnostic capacity. ‘Pay awards that are higher than what is affordable, and which are not supported by additional investment, will put further pressure on the NHS budget,’ it said.

The Nuffield Trust also called recently for an overhaul in the pay review process, including bringing deadlines forward so recommendations and decisions are published before the start of the financial year.