The government has asked the independent review bodies to deliver their recommendations on NHS and general practice pay ‘at the earlier point’ to help speed up pay awards for the next financial year.

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has this week sent letters to the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) and the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) to commence the next pay round.

In recent years, the reimbursement rates for practice pharmacists employed through the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS) in England have increased in line with the recommendations of the NHSPRB.

Meanwhile, the DDRB recommendations set for GPs have been expected, by NHS England, to be passed onto all employed practice staff, including pharmacists.

In his letters, Mr Streeting said the government’s ‘intention is to announce pay awards as close to the start of the pay year of 1 April as possible for 2025 to 2026’.

This year recommendations from both the NHSPRB and DDRB were published at the end of July, with payments backdated to April.

In England, the government accepted a 6% pay rise for GPs – to be also passed onto practice staff – and a 5.5% pay rise for NHS staff.

To support earlier pay review reports, Mr Streeting committed to publishing his department’s written evidence for 2025/26 ‘as soon as possible’ after the October Spending Review.

This evidence will cover the ‘recruitment and retention context alongside pay and earnings data’ as well as the ‘expected position’ after this year’s pay award and the department’s available funding.

‘We know that public sector workers delivering our vital public services deserve timely pay awards, so, as the Chancellor said in her July Statement, the government’s intention is to announce pay awards as close to the start of the pay year of 1 April as possible for 2025 to 2026,’ said Mr Streeting.

‘It is unfortunate that, given the knock-on effects from the previous government’s delays to the 2024 to 2025 round, it is unlikely that workforces will receive pay increases by April, but by bringing the pay round forwards this year, we can more fully reset the timeline in 2026 to 2027.’

He said he recognised that changing the timeline from recent years would ‘present challenges’ for the pay review bodies, but stressed the ‘importance of returning to more timely annual pay processes’.

This year, the NHS England has implemented the 6% DDRB pay rise recommendation for all GPs and said it expects this rise to be also given to employed practice pharmacists. And it has uplifted the global sum by 7.4% to support this.

Separately, primary care networks (PCN) in England can be reimbursed at an additional 5.6% more per ARRS pharmacist – around about in line with the NHSPRB recommended uplift. However, the total amount of ARRS funding allocated to each PCN will remain at January 2024 levels.

As in previous years, this could mean that if PCNs uplift ARRS salaries, they risk having less money to hire further roles, or may even need to reduce their workforce.

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A version of this article was first published by our sister title, Pulse