Midwife take-home pay

A midwife on NHS band 6 in England takes home about £2,452 a month on the intermediate point of £42,170 in 2026/27, after the NHS pension and a Plan 2 student loan. With enhancements worth £3,000 over the year, that rises to about £2,590. Healthcareers says midwives are typically paid on band 5 when they qualify, so band 6 is the next step for many.

A band 6 payslip, month by month

Take a midwife on the intermediate point, £42,170, with a Plan 2 loan. These are monthly equivalents of the annual figures, using a 1257L code in England. The second column adds £250 a month of unsocial hours enhancements, which is a hypothetical amount. The enhancements are paid a month in arrears in practice.

	Basic pay only	With £250 of enhancements
Gross pay	£3,514.17	£3,764.17
NHS pension (9.8%)	£344.39	£368.89
Income Tax	£424.46	£469.56
National Insurance	£197.33	£217.33
Plan 2 student loan	£95.89	£118.39
Take-home pay	£2,452.10	£2,590.00

The £250 gross adds £137.90 of take-home pay, around 55 per cent. Of the rest, £24.50 goes into the pension, £45.10 in tax, £20.00 in National Insurance and £22.50 to the loan. Without a student loan the same enhancements add £160.40. In England the handbook adds 30% of basic pay for Saturday hours and for weekday time between 8pm and 6am, and 60% for Sundays and public holidays. Enhancements are pensionable and are worked out on basic salary only. Band 6 take-home pay shows the entry and top points.

From band 5 to band 6

Band 5 tops out at £39,043 and band 6 starts at £39,959, so the move adds only £916 a year gross, £76.33 a month, if you are at the top of band 5. Both points are in the 9.8% pension tier, so the extra is taxed and charged National Insurance and loan repayments but not a higher pension rate.

Move	Extra take-home a month, no loan	Plan 2 loan
Band 5 top (£39,043) to band 6 entry (£39,959)	£48.97	£42.11

The gain is larger for a midwife who moves up from an earlier band 5 point. Band 5 entry is £32,073 and the intermediate point £34,592, both in the 8.3% tier, so moving from either to band 6 entry at £39,959 also takes you into the 9.8% tier, which starts at £35,156. Band 5 pay and jobs and band 6 pay and jobs list the points and the jobs at each band.

Healthcareers also describes band 6 as reachable through a team manager role, and midwife consultant roles at bands 8b to 8c. Regrading rules vary by trust, so check the job description as well as the title.

On-call and community work

Community and continuity-of-care teams often run on-call rotas. The NHS handbook says an employee who is on call is entitled to a payment decided by local agreement, within the principles in its annex. The handbook has no pounds-and-pence figure, so the amount in your contract depends on the trust. On-call payments that follow a specific rota commitment are pensionable, according to the NHS Business Services Authority’s pensionable pay factsheet, but extra on-call hours beyond whole time are not.

Ask your employer which payments are pensionable and how often they are paid, because that decides whether your pension rate changes.

Overtime and extra shifts

Staff in bands 1 to 7 can claim overtime at time and a half for hours above 37.5 a week, or double time on general public holidays. The extra half is not pensionable. Extra bank shifts for the same employer are normally taxed under your usual code, while bank work for another trust is often taxed on a BR code, which tax on NHS bank shifts explains.

Scotland and student loans

Midwives in NHS Scotland are on a separate Agenda for Change scale with higher values and different pension tiers, and Scottish residents pay Scottish Income Tax rates. Students from Scotland are usually on Plan 4, with a threshold of £33,795. The take-home pay calculator runs your own pay point, loan plan and enhancements.