NHS spine points and bands

[Plankingplanks]

I need someone to give me a reason why they got rid of pay points in the nhs bands. It seems to make no sense to me. I'm likely to go up a band soon and the pay increase compared to the jump in responsibility is pitiful the. I will have to stay in post for 5 years with no pay rise other than inflationary and then I'll get a huge jump.

Why bother? I think it must be because they want people to stay in post longer but surely it is stopping people going up? I have to work with more responsibility for 5 years! It would be much better if they did it in increments surely?

I remember reading that by next year most nhs staff will be at the top of their band!

I agree with you, it was a bit soul destroying to have to wait 5 years for any increment point. It might have then been a reasonable pay rise, but I'd rather have had something at 2-3 years in the middle

That is exactly what it is, soul destroying. I really can't understand what they hoped to achieve by it. I was hoping someone had a good reason for why they did it!! 🤣

It was to save money. Just like every other change they make to public sector pay structures.

It's not a good reason, but that is the reason.

But it's only a short term (maybe general election term) fix isn't it, because in 5 years everyone is at the top of the scale and they are paying out loads anyway and no chance of people wanting to progress for just an extra £500 a year for 5 years, so you are compounding a workforce issue.

The NHS pay review body has fed this back amongst other things. Whether or not it’s reviewed and changed is another matter

There used to be a lot of overlap between bands - the top of one band was about half way up the next band. They simplified it to make it 'fairer' and less confusing, but didn't want people to actually progress up the scale faster because that would cost more. So they took out a lot of the annual steps within each band while keeping roughly the same number of years between bottom and top of each band. Result - a lot of waiting around.

It's an ongoing saving because at any given point in time there will always be people on what would have been spine points 2-4, and those people are all cheaper under the new system. Not just salary, but pensions, employer's NIC too.

The people on spine point 1 & 5 may cost the same, but that doesn't negate the overall saving.

Yes I remember them doing that, it didn't really affect me at the time so hadn't really thought about it but now I'm going to be stuck earning basically the same doing more and a long time until a decent pay rise.

Oh, so I'll just hold my breath then! 🤣 Government only seem to listen to them when they recommend a massively below inflationary rise don't they?! 🤣

I agree. I'm top of band 5.

I'm being pushed to go for a band 6.

But the responsibility means taking charge in itu, or of the whole unit, for an extra 20p an hour. Until I've done the role for two years. Then it's not much more!

I'm resisting!