The latest Government offer on pay and DDRB reform

The new deal builds upon what was previously offered from Government and delivers some significant improvements.

Changes to pay 

The new pay deal addresses member concerns that too many consultants would have been left without an immediate uplift to pensionable pay in the previous offer. The deal builds on changes to the consultant pay scale in the original offer and now includes a 2.85% (£3,000) consolidated uplift for those who have been consultants between four and seven years.  

As pay for those who have been consultants for three years has not been further uplifted, this will therefore create an additional pay point. Progression to this new pay point will however be automatic (with no need for a pay progression meeting).  

The pay elements of the new deal will be applied in coming months and backdated to 1 March 2024. 

Pay body reform 

The process for appointing DDRB members will now allow for greater input by the BMA and other trade unions. Relevant unions will be invited to work collaboratively with the Government to prepare job specifications and be part of the panel during the sifting stage of the recruitment process. The Government has restated that DDRB members must be people of eminence and authority and has committed to increasing the remuneration for DDRB members and advertising more widely to ensure that it attracts the best calibre of appointee. 

There have been significant changes to the terms of reference that guide their recommendations. Firstly, it will be clear that the DDRB must have regard to changes in doctors pay over the years in the context of long-term trends in the wider labour, as well as considering comparator professions including relevant international comparators. This is key as the DDRB will no longer be able to ignore what has happened to our pay in past when making recommendations.  

Secondly, the DDRB will need to consider each factor within its terms of reference separately and not allow one feature to override others. This is important: when reading previous DDRB reports, they give the impression that while they recognise that pay has fallen both over time and against comparators, this was ignored because other features, such as a blunt assessment of recruitment and retention and the Government's position on affordability, dominated. With these changes the DDRB will need to have regard for each of the factors separately without them being contingent on each other.      

Thirdly, it has been clarified that the Government cannot constrain the DDRB by including information about affordability its remit and instead should confine this information within its own evidence.  

These DDRB reforms will be in place for the 2025/26 round. This is the first meaningful reforms to the DDRB since 1998 and aim to ensure that the DDRB has much greater independence and the power to make fair recommendations on doctors pay.

BMA submission of DDRB evidence for consultants in England

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Watch Vish Sharma, chair of the consultants committee introduce the new pay offer at the UK consultants conference on 5 March 2024.

Committed to fixing pay now and for the future

Our objective has been to achieve two things – an above inflation pay uplift for this year (2023/2024) and reforms to the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) to fix pay now and for the future.

After months of hard work by our members and many hours of negotiations, we put the Government’s initial pay offer to our members via a referendum that was open between 14 December 2023 and 23 January 2024. Members rejected that offer by a close margin (51% to 4 9%).

How we got here