When Is My NHS Increment Due?

How Many Steps Does Your Band Have?

This is the part that is actually published, so it is the part we can state. The number of steps varies by band, by nation and by year.

How Long Each Pay Step Takes

Every nation publishes the minimum time you must spend on a step before you are eligible for the next one. The clock starts on the day you started in your band, and it does not restart when the annual pay award changes the figures.

Worked Examples

• Band 5 nurse, started 14 October 2025, England. Eligible for the intermediate step on 14 October 2027 and the top step on 14 October 2029.
• Promoted to Band 7 on 2 March 2026, England. The pay step date resets to the promotion date. Intermediate step from 2 March 2028; top step from 2 March 2031.
• Band 8a, started 5 June 2023, Scotland. One step, due after five years, on 5 June 2028. The same post in England would have had a step after two years.

What a Step Is Actually Worth

The gross figure is the one everybody quotes and the least useful one. Moving from the entry step of band 5 to the mid step is a rise of £2,519 gross; the step to the top is worth £4,451. What reaches your account is between a third and two thirds of that, depending entirely on where the step lands you.

Here is every step in every band, run through the calculator twice and differenced. Nothing below is estimated or rounded from a rule of thumb — each row is a full calculation.

The worst step on the scale is Band 9, step 2 to 3: a rise of £10,200 gross that returns £281 a month — you keep 33% of it. That step lands in the range where the personal allowance tapers away, producing a marginal rate well above the headline one.

This is not an argument against progression — every step is still a rise. It is an argument for checking the net figure before you plan around the gross one, and for knowing which step is the one that surprises people.

What You Have to Meet to Move Up

In England, Annex 23 of the handbook sets five standards. You move to the next step on your pay step date where:

1. your appraisal has been completed within the last 12 months, with an outcome in line with your organisation’s standards;
2. there is no formal capability process in place;
3. there is no formal disciplinary sanction live on your record;
4. your statutory and mandatory training is complete;
5. if you are a line manager, you have completed appraisals for all your staff.

Three details in the same annex decide most disputes:

• Things outside your control do not count against you. Where organisational or operational problems stopped you meeting a standard, such as training that was never made available or an appraisal that was never booked, that should not prevent progression (paragraph 23).
• Informal action does not count. Investigations, informal stages, informal warnings and sickness-absence processes are excluded (paragraphs 20 and 21).
• A sanction imposed after your pay step date cannot be used to delay it (paragraph 38).

At the top of bands 8c, 8d and 9 in England, 5 or 10 per cent of basic pay becomes re-earnable each year from 12 months after you reach the top. Meet the same standards and it is kept; miss them and it can be withheld for that year (Section 1, paragraph 1.11).

Promotion Resets the Clock

When you move up a band your basic pay is set at the minimum step of the new band, and your pay step date resets to the date you start in it. Time served in the old band does not carry over. If the new starting salary, counting basic pay, any unsocial hours payment and any long-term recruitment and retention premium, would not be an increase, your previous earnings are protected until it is (Section 1, paragraphs 1.17 and 1.18). In Scotland you start on the first point of the new band that produces an increase.

• Acting up. A temporary move into a higher band also resets the date for the higher band. When you return, the time spent acting up is credited to your substantive post’s pay step date (paragraph 1.24).
• Your post is re-banded upwards after job evaluation: the pay step date becomes the anniversary of the date the new job description took effect (Annex 23, paragraph 13).
• Same band, different job, or a move down a band during organisational change: the pay step date does not change (paragraph 14).

Changing Employer

Continuous previous service with any NHS employer counts towards pay step eligibility (Annex 23, paragraph 16), so moving between NHS employers at the same band keeps your step and your pay step date. Employers also have discretion to count relevant service outside the NHS (paragraph 17). This is where errors cluster — check your first payslip at a new employer, and raise anything wrong immediately, because the longer it runs the more tangled the correction becomes.

Moving between nations is a different matter: you move onto that nation's scale entirely, which is a different set of figures and in Scotland a different working week. See pay across the four nations.

Maternity, Sickness and Career Breaks

If a pay step falls due while you are absent, the handbook’s principle is that you should suffer no detriment (Annex 23, paragraph 44).

• Maternity, adoption and shared parental leave: the review can be held early so the step is applied on the date. If it cannot be held, the step should be applied automatically in your absence (paragraphs 45 and 46; Section 15, paragraph 15.92).
• Suspension on full pay is a neutral act: the step should still be applied if you were meeting the standards when suspended (paragraph 49).
• Unpaid breaks are not covered by these rules and can affect reckonable service. Check your employer’s own policy before a career break.

What If My Increment Is Missed?

1. Check your incremental date on your payslip or ESR record.
2. Confirm the date you joined your current band, and whether any promotion reset it. Use the pay step date calculator to see when the step was due.
3. Raise it with your line manager and payroll in writing, giving the band start date and the step you believe is due.
4. If it was missed through an error, you are owed arrears from the date it was due.
5. If it is being withheld for performance reasons, that should have been discussed with you in advance. You have the right to contest the decision through your employer’s local procedure, and if the appeal succeeds the step is backdated to your pay step date (Annex 23, paragraph 33). Your union can advise.

Where a step is delayed and you later meet the standards, it takes effect from the earliest date you met them, and your pay step date for future years stays the same (paragraph 36). If a disciplinary sanction that caused a delay is overturned on appeal, the step is backdated (paragraph 22).

Paragraph references are to the NHS Terms and Conditions of Service Handbook, Section 1 and Annex 23: Pay progression (England), checked 2026-09-17. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own progression policies; the step lengths above apply in all four.