Make your vote on the NHS pay offer for England

It took weeks of strikes and more than 150,000 cancelled appointments for the UK government to come back to the table to discuss NHS pay in England.

CSP members were magnificent in first voting in huge numbers for industrial action and then turning out in force across two days of strikes to add to the overwhelming pressure on the government.

The context for the negotiations, which took place over two weeks in March, was entirely different from those in Scotland and Wales due to the sheer intransigence of the government in England, but an eventual offer did emerge. While imperfect, the offer is a significant one and something our pay committee of members felt able to recommend accepting as the best achievable.

It means that, taken with the £1,400 already received, the large majority of members would get an uplift in their consolidated (permanent) salary of around nine per cent over this year and next.

In addition, members would receive a one-off lump sum payment in the coming months of around six per cent of their salary for the 22/23 pay year. 

We know you deserve more and should never have been in this position – we share your anger and believe me, we conveyed it.

We wanted the whole offer consolidated to help bridge the gap opened by more than a decade of government pay freezes and restraint.

The government’s separate suggestion to the RCN to ‘discuss’ a possible new pay spine for nurses is unwelcome, unworkable and opposed by all unions – it’s not part of the offer you’ll vote on.

But it’s important to recognise the U-turn that the government has been forced to make in this dispute.

This government consistently refused to reopen the 22/23 pay award but ended up offering a six per cent bonus.

It didn’t want to go beyond 3.5 per cent next year because inflation is due to be below that by the winter but ended up moving to five per cent.

We now believe this is the best offer that can be achieved through negotiation, but this is your decision so please do vote and let us know your views. Vote via an emailed online survey by noon, Thursday 27 April.