Dear colleagues,

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care published a written ministerial statement (WMS) on Wednesday 23 April 2025, which we would like to bring to your attention.

The WMS confirms the Government’s acceptance of a range of recommendations arising from the 2023 NHS pay deal and particularly emphasises the critical role of NHS organisations in correctly and robustly applying the NHS job evaluation scheme.

This is essential to ensure that the Agenda for Change (AfC) contract is locally compliant with the Equality Act 2010 and that staff receive equal pay for work of equal value.

You and your boards will be aware of the importance of ensuring the correct local implementation of national employment contracts.

Ineffective application of local job evaluation processes may lead to significant consequences that ultimately have negative effects on patient outcomes, including reduced staff morale, industrial relations tensions, and the associated HR, legal and financial costs impacting local budgets arising from any corrective measures.

Next steps

It is important that there is clear board ownership of local job evaluation and that boards are assured it is being implemented correctly, in line with the Secretary of State’s expectations.

All board members – but especially chief people, nursing and finance officers (CPOs, CNOs, CFOs) – will need to work closely to understand your current job evaluation position and the areas for improvement and all associated risks.

NHS Employers has been providing support and guidance to CPOs and an enabling agreement, audit exercise and further joint guidance from the NHS Staff Council is anticipated.

The job evaluation reviews of band 2 healthcare support workers demonstrated the need to ensure that job descriptions are up-to-date, consistent and reflective of the work that post holders are asked to undertake. We are cognisant of the time, in some trusts, it has taken to resolve these challenges and the impact this has had on staff and industrial relations.

The NHS Staff Council expects to publish updated job matching profiles (bands 4 – 9) for nursing and midwifery roles and accompanying detailed technical guidance in early June 2025. In the course of collecting evidence for the review, it was identified that job documentation was often outdated, leading to concerns about pay banding outcomes.

The NHS Staff Council expects organisations to prioritise nursing and midwifery within a managed process to ensure job documentation accuracy. This may in turn lead to additional job evaluation activity that will need to be resourced and managed locally to ensure a timely response.

Organisations are encouraged to work collaboratively across their regions to ensure a consistent approach.

Regional directors of workforce, training and education will take the lead for job evaluation assurance, evaluating progress and identifying material risks or outlier organisations.

Boards are accountable for overseeing the impact of workforce redesign resulting from job evaluation reviews and must ensure that all changes are implemented effectively within existing budget constraints.

Ministers will be kept informed via the NHS Staff Council. You are strongly encouraged, if not already doing so, to work in partnership with local trade unions to establish effective job evaluation practices, supported by national guidance and resources provided by the NHS Staff Council and NHS Employers.

As this work progresses, we will continue to keep you updated and would like to thank you in advance for the focus on this important element of NHS employment contracts.

Yours sincerely,

Publication reference: PRN02015