The go-to site for
NHS pay, pensions & careers

FrontlinePay exists because most NHS pay and pension questions have a precise, calculable answer — and most of what's written about them online doesn't actually work it out. "What band am I on," "how much will my pension actually be," "what does this pay rise mean for my payslip" all resolve to real numbers once you plug in your own band, pay point, location and service length, rather than a rough national average. That's the gap this site fills: free calculators built on the actual Agenda for Change pay scales and NHS Pension Scheme rules, plus in-depth guides for when you need the mechanism explained, not just the number. We're independent — not NHS England, not the DHSC, not a recruitment agency — so there's no institutional reason to make anything sound simpler or rosier than it is.

Most of what determines an NHS payslip comes down to a short list of variables. If you're one of the roughly 1.5 million staff on Agenda for Change — nurses, paramedics, allied health professionals, healthcare assistants, admin and estates, healthcare scientists — your pay is your band (2 to 9; Band 1 is closed to new starters) and your pay point within it, plus a High Cost Area Supplement of 5-20% if you work in or around London, plus unsocial hours enhancements of 30% for nights and Saturdays or 60% for Sundays and bank holidays if your rota includes them. For 2026/27, that base scale rose 3.3% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 3.75% in Scotland, which runs its own separate pay spine and settlement. Doctors and dentists sit entirely outside Agenda for Change, on a nodal-point structure for resident doctors and a separate scale for consultants, with their own review body (the DDRB) and their own 2026/27 settlement — see NHS Pay below for exactly how that works if that's your contract.

Pensions add a second layer most people underestimate. Nearly everyone currently accruing NHS Pension is in the 2015 Scheme, a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) design: you bank 1/54th of that year's actual pensionable pay every year, and the running total is revalued annually rather than being based on your final salary. Your own contribution rate is tiered by how much you earn — from 5.2% up to 12.5% of pensionable pay — and staff with pre-2015 service often have a further layer to untangle via the McCloud remedy, which governs whether the 1995, 2008 or 2015 Section applies to their service between 2015 and 2022. NHS Pension below covers all of it.

If you already know what you're looking for, the tools and guide sections below get you there directly — Pay, Pensions, Roles, Careers and everything else are organised around the actual decision you're facing, not by department. If you're earlier in the process and just want your own numbers, start with the NHS Pay Calculator or NHS Pension Calculator below; both are free, need no account, and use the same figures as every guide on this site, so a result from one should always match the equivalent guide.