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GeraClinic / Gera Healthcare Pay Index / Methodology

Methodology — Gera Healthcare Pay Index

What the reference is, how it is built, and — just as importantly — what it deliberately does not show.

What this is

The Gera Healthcare Pay Index is a free, dated compilation of the official published NHS basic pay scales for England. It brings two separate scales into one place — Agenda for Change (Bands 2–9, covering all NHS staff except doctors, dentists and very senior managers) and the medical & dental grades (foundation doctor through consultant) — and adds a small number of transparently derived headline figures. The reference period is 1 April 2026 (2026/27 pay year).

The pay figures themselves are not a Gera estimate: every number is the employer's official published scale. The Gera contribution is the compilation, the dating, and the two derived figures below.

Sources

Agenda for Change figures are taken from the NHS Employers pay-scale tables; doctor figures from NHS Health Careers. Both reflect the Department of Health and Social Care pay award effective 1 April 2026, which is published on GOV.UK under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Derived figures

  • Pay-ladder multiple (6.0×). The top of the consultant scale (£150,569) divided by the bottom of the whole ladder, Agenda for Change Band 2 entry (£25,272). It is a plain ratio of two published figures.
  • Year-on-year uplift. Computed by comparing the 2026/27 band minimums with the 2025/26 minimums — about 3.3% on Agenda for Change. The medical & dental award for 2026/27 was 3.5%, as set out in the DHSC pay award.

What this does not show

  • England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland negotiate their own Agenda for Change and medical pay scales; their figures differ.
  • Basic pay only. The figures exclude High Cost Area Supplements (London: 20% Inner, 15% Outer, 5% Fringe, each with published cash floors and caps), unsocial-hours enhancements (Section 2 of Agenda for Change), on-call, overtime and additional NHS activity.
  • Not take-home pay. All figures are annual gross pay before income tax, National Insurance and NHS pension contributions.
  • Doctors' earnings understated. A doctor's actual pay is usually well above basic once additional activity, on-call and clinical excellence awards are counted.
  • Point-in-time. These are the scales as at 1 April 2026. They are revised annually, on the 1 April pay award; the individual pay points within each band are not all listed here — only band minimums and maximums.
  • Not advice. This is an informational reference, not financial or employment advice, and not an offer of employment. Gera is not a recruitment agency for the NHS; NHS vacancies are advertised and recruited to by NHS organisations directly.

Update policy

The scales change once a year, on the 1 April pay award. This reference is re-verified against the source tables when a new award is published; it was last re-verified on 3 July 2026. Where a figure on this site disagrees with the official NHS Employers or NHS Health Careers tables, the official source is correct.