NHS workers paid more than a quarter more than equivalent frontline care staff.
Frontline care worker pay continues to lag behind equivalent NHS roles, with take-home wages sitting at more than £7,000 a year under band 3 health staff, according to a fresh analysis published today.
The take-home pay gap between care workers and equivalent NHS staff stands at well over a quarter (28.6 per cent), according to the Unfair To Care ‘Signs of Change ‘report, published today by charity Community Integrated Care.
While this represents a narrowing from the 39 per cent gap recorded in 2021, the figure has remained virtually unchanged over the last twelve months, according to the report, leading the charity to warn policy makers they “cannot afford to stand still” on the issue.
The report also highlights that providers are already facing an average 9 per cent rise in operating costs, fuelled primarily by unfunded increases in Employer National Insurance and the National Living Wage, which rose to £12.21 earlier this year – and is set to rise to £12.71 next month.
The report authors said the analysis is based on an independent evidence-based framework, known as the Korn Ferry Hay Guide Chart-Profile Method, which assesses the physical and emotional demands of frontline work and consistently finds that social care support roles are at least equivalent in complexity to an NHS Band 3 jobs, which include titles such as healthcare or pharmacy assistants.
However, despite equivalent responsibility, the report points out that a social care support worker would require an annual pay rise of £7,048 just to achieve take-home parity with their NHS peers.
The gap widens by 43.3 per cent or over £10,000 (£10,990) a year if you factor in NHS pension and benefits, according to the report.
It also concludes that the Fair Pay Agreement (FPA), scheduled for full implementation in 2028-29 may only deliver an uplift of 68p per hour above the National Minimum Wage, despite being backed by £500 million in funding.
And even if this funding were available today, social care workers would still earn 29p per hour less than the NHS baseline, the report asserts, adding that if employer "on costs" are absorbed within this uplift, the actual increase reaching workers’ pockets could fall to around 50p per hour.
The new analysis is released against a backdrop of an ongoing recruitment crisis that has left the sector with a 7 per cent vacancy rate – three times the average overall rate of 2.3 per cent.
The charity has used the findings to urge the government to implement interim pay uplifts for the next two years to bridge the gap before the FPA comes into force, and is also calling for a “full flow-through” of funding from local councils to providers to cover higher National Insurance and pension contributions, alongside a clearer method for determining fee levels that reflect the true cost of care.
Teresa Exelby, chief corporate services and people officer at the charity said that while the direction of travel is clearer than it has been in years, "narrowing the gap is not the same as closing it."
She added the commitment to a statutory FPA, alongside the Casey Commission, represents a “genuine opportunity” to address decades of “structural inequality”, but only if the changes are funded properly and implemented with “real discipline”.
“The direction is clearer than it has been for some time. The responsibility now is to ensure this moment leads to tangible change - and that fairness is delivered fully, not partially.,” she said.
The report also warns the care workforce is set to be destabilised by immigration policy changes expected to reduce the number of international workers entering the sector, while tax freezes are estimated by Care England to strip £1.4 billion from care workers' take-home pay before the FPA comes into effect.
