NHS Wales Pay Calculator 2026/27
NHS Wales pay in 2026/27 starts at £26,300 a year for Band 2 and runs to £131,732 at the top of Band 9, under a 3.3% Agenda for Change award that took effect on 1 April 2026. Welsh pay is not English pay with a different label: the scales are higher at every band entry, the lowest rates are floored at the £13.45 Real Living Wage rate, and one pay point — Band 3 entry — was corrected after publication. A Band 5 nurse starting in Wales earns £32,557 a year, which works out at £2,066.57 a month of take-home pay after pension, tax and National Insurance, against £2,040.21 for the same nurse in England. Use the calculator above for your own band and pay point.
Wales does not use the English pay scales — Welsh bands carry a built-in premium, a living-wage floor, and one pay point that was corrected in June 2026. This NHS Wales pay calculator uses the real Welsh scales, so your take-home is the Welsh figure, not the English one quoted everywhere else.
NHS Wales pay bands 2026/27 — salary, hourly rate and take-home
Full-time (37.5 hours), NHS Pension included, no student loan, calculated by the NHS Wales pay calculator above:
| Band | Salary (entry → top) | Hourly | Take-home / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Band 2 | £26,300 | £13.45 | £1,757.33 |
| Band 3 | £26,813 → £27,890 | £13.71 → £14.26 | £1,785.89 → £1,845.84 |
| Band 4 | £28,819 → £31,626 | £14.74 → £16.17 | £1,897.56 → £2,015.86 |
| Band 5 | £32,557 → £39,631 | £16.65 → £20.27 | £2,066.57 → £2,412.24 |
| Band 6 | £40,559 → £48,841 | £20.74 → £24.98 | £2,461.86 → £2,904.67 |
| Band 7 | £50,129 → £57,365 | £25.64 → £29.34 | £2,973.53 → £3,345.52 |
| Band 8a | £58,379 → £65,723 | £29.85 → £33.61 | £3,389.11 → £3,704.78 |
| Band 8b | £67,583 → £78,530 | £34.56 → £40.16 | £3,784.73 → £4,184.59 |
| Band 8c | £80,698 → £92,984 | £41.27 → £47.55 | £4,275.82 → £4,792.86 |
| Band 8d | £95,773 → £110,448 | £48.98 → £56.48 | £4,910.23 → £5,527.80 |
| Band 9 | £114,475 → £131,732 | £58.54 → £67.37 | £5,694.54 → £6,169.11 |
Band 1 (closed to new entrants) also sits at £26,300. Bands 5 to 9 have an intermediate point too — £35,114, £42,805, £52,712, £61,317, £71,952, £85,611, £101,643 and £121,377 — all included in the calculator. If you have been checking your salary against the tables on English websites, every figure there is roughly 1.5% too low for Wales.
Why Welsh NHS pay is not English NHS pay
The 1.5% Welsh premium. An earlier Welsh settlement added a consolidated 1.5% on top of the Agenda for Change scales, and it has carried through every award since. The 2026/27 award was the same 3.3% as England — but applied to scales that were already higher. From the top of Band 3 upwards, Welsh pay is almost exactly 1.015 times the English figure: a top-of-band Band 6 in Wales earns £48,841 against £48,117 in England, worth £464.52 a year more in take-home pay.
The living-wage floor. NHS Wales guarantees the Real Living Wage Foundation rate — £13.45 an hour for 2026/27. That sets a floor of £26,300 a year under Bands 1 and 2, which is why Band 2 pay rose 5.9% this year (from £24,833) while the headline award was 3.3%, and why the Welsh Band 2 salary is £1,028 above England’s £25,272.
The Band 3 correction — check your payslip. The original 2026/27 circular put Band 3’s entry point at £26,300 too, wiping out the gap between the top of Band 2 and the bottom of Band 3. In June 2026 NHS Wales corrected it, lifting Band 3 entry by a further 1.95% to £26,813 — the figure this NHS Wales pay calculator uses. Many pay tables published earlier in 2026 still show £26,300 — if your payslip says £26,300 at Band 3 entry, the correction has not been applied to your record and you should query it with payroll.
What stays the same as England. The pension is the same NHS Pension Scheme (England & Wales) with the same six contribution tiers and 23.7% employer rate. Income tax is collected at Welsh rates — set in Cardiff, and currently identical to England’s at every band, so the maths does not change (your tax code starts with a C). The working week is 37.5 hours, unsocial-hours enhancements are the standard Section 2 rates, and there is no London weighting in Wales. Our methodology page shows the full calculation.
Wales vs England: the take-home difference
Same band, same point, same tax and pension — only the scale differs:
| Top of band | England take-home / year | Wales take-home / year | Wales difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Band 5 | £28,569.59 | £28,946.85 | +£377.26 |
| Band 6 | £34,391.46 | £34,855.98 | +£464.52 |
| Band 7 | £39,707.83 | £40,146.26 | +£438.43 |
| Band 8a | £43,955.45 | £44,457.32 | +£501.87 |
Nobody is retiring on £40 a month — but if you check a Welsh payslip against an English table, the difference looks exactly like a payroll error. It isn’t one. The NHS Wales pay calculator above runs entirely on the Welsh scales, so the figure it gives you is the one to check against. It is also smaller than the Scottish gap: a top-of-band Band 5 in Scotland takes home £31,080.14 a year, over £2,100 more than Wales, on a 36-hour week — run the comparison in the NHS Scotland pay calculator, or your own band in the England & Wales calculator.
Worked example: a Band 5 nurse in Cardiff
A newly qualified Band 5 nurse in Wales starts on £32,557 — £484 above the English entry point. In the NHS Pension at 8.3% she pays £2,702.23 a year; income tax is £3,456.95; National Insurance is £1,598.96. Take-home: £24,798.86 a year — £2,066.57 a month. At the top of the band (£39,631) the pension tier rises to 9.8% and take-home reaches £2,412.24 a month.
Sources: RCN Wales — Welsh Government Agenda for Change pay award 2026/27 (3.3%, paid from 1 April 2026); UNISON Cymru — the 3.3% award and the Real Living Wage uplift to Bands 1, 2 and Band 3 entry; NHS Wales pay circular 2026/27 and the June 2026 Band 3 payroll correction, as reflected in the scales above.
The 2026/27 award and the Real Living Wage floor
The headline award is 3.3% on every Agenda for Change pay point, accepted from the Pay Review Body’s recommendation and paid on time in April 2026 salaries — the first on-time award in years. But the headline is not the whole story, because Wales had already committed to paying the Real Living Wage Foundation rate of £13.45 an hour from April 2026. That floor lifted the lowest-paid staff by more than the headline: Band 2 entry rose from £24,833 to £26,300, an increase of £1,467 or about 5.9%, and the lowest-paid increases ranged from roughly 3.8% to 5.9%. Higher bands tracked the headline closely — Band 5 entry rose £1,041 (from £31,516 to £32,557) and Band 7 entry rose £1,602 (from £48,527 to £50,129). So if your increase looks bigger than 3.3%, that is the floor doing its work, not an error on your payslip.
The Band 3 correction — why some tables still show £26,300
The original 2026/27 Welsh circular put Band 2 entry and Band 3 entry at exactly the same figure, £26,300. That removed the pay difference between the top of Band 2 and the start of Band 3, which is not how the band structure is supposed to work. NHS Wales issued a payroll correction dated 1 June 2026, lifting Band 3 entry by a further 1.95% to £26,813, with the top of Band 3 at £27,890. The correction restores a £513 gap above Band 2. This matters because many pay tables published before June still show £26,300 as the Band 3 starting salary — if the table you are reading shows Band 2 and Band 3 starting at the same figure, it predates the correction. This page shows the corrected £26,813, and the full Welsh scales are on our NHS pay scales page.
Wales take-home pay, line by line
Wales uses the same income tax bands as England and the same NHS pension tiers, administered by the NHS Business Services Authority, on a 37.5-hour week — so the difference from England is the scale itself, not the deduction rules. Here is a Band 5 entry point in Wales, month by month: gross pay £2,713.08, less NHS pension at 8.3% (£225.19), less income tax (£288.08), less National Insurance (£133.25) — take-home £2,066.57 a month, £24,798.86 a year, £476.90 a week. At the top of Band 5 (£39,631) the lines read: gross £3,302.58, pension at 9.8% (£323.65), tax (£386.29), National Insurance (£180.41) — take-home £2,412.24 a month. One visible difference on a Welsh payslip: the tax code carries a “C” prefix, as in C1257L, identifying you as a Welsh taxpayer. The rates behind it are the same as England’s — the prefix is about where the tax goes, not how much it is. Pension tiers are set by your actual pensionable pay, not the full-time equivalent, so part-time staff are tiered on what they actually earn.
Wales allowances — and no London weighting
Basic salary is only part of Welsh NHS earnings. The 2026/27 Welsh circular sets sleeping-in at £44.82 and Wales on-call at £26.05 for weekday and weekend sessions and £52.08 for public holidays. Unsocial hours enhancements follow the same Section 2 percentages as England — for example time plus 35% for Saturdays and weekday nights and time plus 69% for Sundays and bank holidays at Band 3. What Wales does not have is London weighting: the High Cost Area Supplement is an English structure, and no Welsh city attracts it, so do not add Inner or Outer London figures to a Welsh salary. If a table shows a Welsh salary with a London supplement on top, it is mixing two countries’ rules.
Wales against the other nations
Same band, same step, four different answers — and the gap is not one thing but a different scale, a different tax system and, in Scotland’s case, a different working week, compounding. Take Band 5 entry, full-time, standard tax code, no student loan: England £32,073 → £2,040.21 a month; Wales £32,557 → £2,066.57; Scotland £34,544 → £2,167.21 (36-hour week, Scottish income tax, SPPA pension tiers); Northern Ireland £31,049 → £1,984.44 — but that last figure is on 2025/26 scales, because the 2026/27 award has not been implemented there and no circular has been issued. Entry-pay gaps between Wales and England run from £484 at Band 5 to £1,028 at Band 2, £1,053 at Band 3, £600 at Band 6, £742 at Band 7 and £1,693 at Band 9. Compare your own band across the nations on our Scotland page and our England scales page.
NHS Wales pay questions
What is the NHS Wales pay rise for 2026/27?
3.3% on Agenda for Change pay points, effective from 1 April 2026 and paid on time in April salaries. The lowest-paid staff saw more — roughly 3.8% to 5.9% — because Wales also moved its minimum rate to the £13.45 Real Living Wage rate.
Why do some tables show Band 3 Wales pay starting at £26,300?
Those tables predate the June 2026 payroll correction. The original circular put Band 2 and Band 3 entry at the same £26,300; the correction lifted Band 3 entry by 1.95% to £26,813 (top £27,890), restoring the gap above Band 2. This page shows the corrected figure.
What is the Real Living Wage floor in NHS Wales pay?
£13.45 an hour from April 2026, the Living Wage Foundation rate. It sets the floor for the lowest Agenda for Change points — Band 2 sits exactly on it at £26,300 a year full-time.
How does NHS Wales pay compare with NHS England pay?
Wales pays more at every band entry in 2026/27 — by £1,028 at Band 2, £1,053 at Band 3, £484 at Band 5, £600 at Band 6, £742 at Band 7 and £1,693 at Band 9. A Band 5 nurse at entry takes home £2,066.57 a month in Wales against £2,040.21 in England.
What does the “C” in a Welsh tax code mean?
It identifies you as a Welsh taxpayer, as in C1257L. The income tax rates are the same as England’s — the prefix is about where the tax revenue goes, not a different rate.
What pension tier do NHS Wales staff pay?
The same E&W tiers as England, administered by the NHS Business Services Authority: 6.5% at Band 2 and Band 3 entry, 8.3% at Band 5 entry, 9.8% at Band 5 top and Band 7 entry. The tier is set by your actual pensionable pay, not the full-time equivalent.
Does NHS Wales pay London weighting?
No. The High Cost Area Supplement is an English structure and no Welsh city attracts it. Do not add Inner or Outer London figures to a Welsh salary — a table that does so is mixing two countries’ rules.
Do NHS bank staff in Wales get the new rates?
Yes. Under the All-Wales Terms of Engagement, bank workers are paid on the Welsh scales for the duties they perform, so scale increases apply to bank work as well, with a minimum linked to the £13.45 Living Wage rate.