New nurses should begin careers on band 6, with £7K pay rise
Posted 30 September 2024 - 13:52
Starting new nurses on more than £37,000 a year would attract ‘brilliance’ and modernise an undervalued profession, says RCN general secretary Nicola Ranger
Newly qualified nurses should start working in the NHS on band 6, with a starting salary of more than £37,000, the RCN has said.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, RCN general secretary Nicola Ranger said that new nurses should get a £7,400 boost in a bid to modernise the profession and attract ‘brilliance’.
Call for new nurses to have a starting salary of £37,338
The union estimates lifting nursing staff up a whole pay band would cost about £1.2 billion over five years, which is about a third of what the health service spends on agency nurses each year.
‘Nursing has to be sorted out – not just for ourselves, but for our patients,’ Professor Ranger told the newspaper.
‘If you look at the evidence, nursing accounts for 62% of all band 5 staff. We are weighted to the bottom. We are the only profession that could start their career as a band 5 and retire as a band 5.’
All newly registered nurses start on band 5 of the Agenda for Change (AfC) pay scale, with an initial salary in England of £29,970. Instead, Professor Ranger told the Sunday Times that new nurses should be on band 6, with a starting salary of £37,338, an increase of almost 25%.
The RCN announced on 23 September that 145,000 of its members in England voted in its consultation on the government’s recent pay award, with two thirds saying they want to reject the 5.5% increase.
Strike action not off the table if nurses continue to be undervalued, says RCN chief
Although the union is yet to announce its next steps, it wrote on X that the ‘UK government must hear that message’. Professor Ranger told the Sunday Times she wants to work with health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, but warned that strike action is not off the table.
‘Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments,’ she said.
‘Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the government’s reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.’
Backdated pay: advice on monthly payments
The award is in line with the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body, and the backdated uplift is due to be paid in October pay packets.
Nursing staff are being urged to contact their employer if they would prefer the amount to be spread across monthly payments, rather than in one lump sum, which is recommended for those who receive benefits such as Universal Credit.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘We know what nurses have been through in recent years and how hard it is at the moment. That’s why, despite the bleak economic inheritance, the chancellor awarded them with an above inflation pay rise.
‘For the first time in a long time, nurses have got a government on their side, that wants to work with them to take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history, to get it back on its feet and make it fit for the future. We will work with NHS staff to turn this around together.’
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