Resident doctors in England are set to strike from next month following the BMA’s rejection of an offer on jobs and pay put forward by the Government.
The association’s resident doctors committee voted to reject the offer yesterday [24 March], accusing the Government of ‘moving the goalposts’ on the pay element of the deal.
The offer had included commitments to reforming the structure of pay scale nodal points and pay uplifts for doctors successful completing their ARCP (annual review of competence progression).
However, RDC negotiators said that, at the last moment, the Government had opted to reduce the value of the original investment on the pay element of the offer and stretch this over a period of three years.
In response, the RDC has today [25 March] confirmed that doctors will stage a six-day walkout from 7 April until 13 April.
This announcement comes as the DDRB (Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration) 2026/27 pay recommendations have proposed a 3.5 per cent increase for all doctors, below the RPI (retail price index) measure of inflation which stands at 3.6 per cent.
Confirming the latest set of strike dates, UK BMA resident doctors committee chair Jack Fletcher said that, despite weeks of negotiations, the Government had failed to deliver meaningful progress on restoring pay.
He said: ‘We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks to try and end the simultaneous pay and jobs crises for resident doctors. Frustratingly we had been making good progress right up until the point, in the last two weeks, when the Government began to shift the goalposts.
‘As talks progressed it became clear that the money proposed for pay increases was now going to be spread over three years. This is combined with today’s pay review body (DDRB) recommendation pointing to yet more years in which our pay, at best, barely treads water.
‘We have made abundantly clear throughout this dispute that our aim is pay restoration, and any deal that did not move us substantially in that direction was not going to fly.
‘We also cannot ignore that, thanks to global events, economic indicators now point to years of greatly increased inflation. We are simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries.’
Should strikes go ahead, it will be the first time resident doctors in England have taken industrial action since a full walkout of staff between 17 and 22 December last year.
Dr Fletcher explained that while resident doctors had been left with no choice but to return to picket lines, he hoped that the six-day walkout would compel the Government to revise its offer and put forward a credible proposal on pay.
He said: ‘We are not closing the door on talks. We remain willing to negotiate and are eager to get a deal done if we can simply recapture the early positive spirit of negotiations. No strikes need to happen, but Government will need to act fast to prevent them.’
Resident doctors in England have been engaged in industrial action since 2023. Despite reaching an agreement of pay in September 2024, the RDC re-entered formal dispute last April after the Government failed to meet the terms of the 2024 agreement.
Following the results of a ballot announced on 2 February, resident doctors in England overwhelmingly endorsed extending their mandate for strike action until August this year.
Find out more information on next month’s strike action.