RCN members working for the NHS in England have voted to reject the 2024/25 pay award from the UK government. A record 145,000 eligible members cast a vote with two-thirds (64%) of them saying they didn’t accept the 5.5% award.
The pay award was announced by the Chancellor in late July as she accepted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB), awarding a 5.5% consolidated pay increase across all bands. This is expected to be paid next month and will be backdated to 1 April 2024.
As this is a pay award rather than a pay offer, the results of our consultation will not directly affect employers' payment of it. However, it shows our members’ strength of feeling that something fundamental must change for nursing pay.
Our consultation was not a vote on the issue of strike action. By law, a new statutory ballot by post would be needed to authorise industrial action.
The government must now demonstrate its commitment to nursing staff by showing that its NHS reform plans will transform the profession as a central part of improving patient care.
Our General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger is in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference where she is talking to ministers about the consultation results and the fact that nursing staff want – and deserve – bolder change.
In a letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting MP, she said: “We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in.
“Many will support the new government’s health and care agenda as set out in recent weeks and fully recognise the diagnosis of a failing NHS. Working closely with all other professionals, nursing staff are the lifeblood of the service. The government will find our continued support for the reforms key to their success.
“To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff and they need to feel valued. Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start. This outcome shows their expectations of government are far higher.
“Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments. Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the government’s reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.”
