GP registrars to receive up to 8.1% pay rise after resident doctors accept deal

Resident doctors, including GP registrars, have accepted the Government’s offer on pay and conditions, bringing an end to strike action.

The BMA said that 53% of eligible members voted in favour of the offer as part of a referendum, the turnout was 57% with 32,932 doctors voting. 

The deal includes pay improvements for GP registrars at ST1 and ST2, who will receive 5.5% and 8.1% pay rises by April next year, as well as funding to cover mandatory GP training costs and RCGP membership, and ringfencing of a pay incentive (see box).

Meanwhile, 4,500 extra specialty training posts are also part of the deal but none will be for GP training places, due to ‘concerns around the post-CCT GP employment opportunities’.

The Government said that the offer delivers ‘meaningful, immediate pay rises’ while also reforming how pay works in the longer term. 

This year, resident doctors will receive an average pay rise of 4.9%, bringing the total increase over four years to 35.2%. First and second-year doctors will receive even higher rises of 6.2% and 7.1% respectively.  

The deal brings an end to a period of industrial action that has seen 21 days of strikes by resident doctors in the past year.

Following the results of the vote, BMA GP committee chair Dr Katie Bramall said she was ‘super impressed’ with resident doctors committee chair Dr Jack Fletcher’s ‘incredible leadership’.

Dr Fletcher said: ‘Resident doctors have spoken. They have decided that the current offer is sufficient to continue on the road to pay restoration, and sufficient to address the absurd lack of jobs in the NHS. The strikes will now end. 

‘These strikes did not need to happen. We spent far too long at loggerheads with the Government when a solution in everyone’s interest was waiting for us: more jobs for doctors, better pay for doctors, and a better-staffed NHS secured for patients well into the future.

‘This is what constructive negotiations can achieve. Next time we hope they can be done without a single picket line having to form – all it takes is a Government willing to think ahead and think creatively.’

He said that resident doctors ‘hope there does not need to be a next time’ but that ‘this is by no means the end of the road for pay restoration’.

He added: ‘Even with our progress in the last few years we are still nearly a fifth behind 2008 levels of pay. It will need determination from Government to keep this journey going. 

‘We are putting the pay review process on notice – if it cannot deliver continued pay improvements, then we risk once again falling back into dispute in future. And without genuine delivery on the jobs front, we will once again see training bottlenecks throttling our careers and with it, further discord.’  

Health secretary James Murray said: ‘This is very good news for resident doctors, patients and the NHS as a whole, allowing us to draw a line under the disruption of previous months and focus on getting on with the job of rebuilding our health service.

‘Because of this deal, resident doctors will benefit from a new pay structure, better career progression opportunities and a range of other improved conditions to support them as they rotate and train. Patients will be relieved that the NHS is entering a period of greater stability.

‘But this is the beginning, not the end of the journey. I know there is much more to do, and I am determined to keep working constructively with resident doctors, all NHS staff, and the unions who represent them to improve their working lives and together build a health service that is fit for the future.’

It comes as the BMA has announced it will ballot GPs on a ‘plan B’ for general practice outside the NHS, in which all GPs, including GP registrars, will take part.