As NHS Doctors and other Healthcare professionals, the NHS Pension is an extremely valuable component of your total reward package. But there’s one question we need to answer: how much does the NHS contribute to your pension?
In this blog we’ll provide the 2025/2026 contribution rates to answer this question.
What is the NHS Pension?
If you’d like a refresher as to what the NHS Pension is, you can check out this blog where we go into further detail. In short, the NHS Pension is based around years of membership, rather than a traditional pension which serves as a ‘pot’ of money to use for retirement. With the NHS Pension, each year’s contributions earn an amount of pension that becomes available at retirement. At retirement, your pension is backed by the UK Government and is uplifted for inflation every year, for life, making it an extremely valuable part of doctors’ retirement strategies.
How much will the NHS contribute to my Pension?
Employer pension contribution rates at time of writing stand at the following:
| Country | Employer Contribution Rate |
| England and Wales | 23.7% |
| Northern Ireland | 23.2% |
| Scotland | 22.5% |
How much will I contribute to my NHS Pension?
The employee contribution rates for the NHS pension are reviewed annually on April 1st, and are largely based on inflation in the economy. For economics nerds like Ed and I, they use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation, rather than the Retail Price Index (RPI). If national pay recommendations are more than CPI then that higher uplift can apply.
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After last year’s review, from 1 April 2026, the new contribution rates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are:
| Updated Pay Range | Contribution rates (on pensionable pay) |
| ≤ £13,259 | 5.2% |
| £13,260 – £28,854 | 6.5% |
| £28,855 – £35,155 | 8.3% |
| £35,156 – £52,778 | 9.8% |
| £52,779 – £67,668 | 10.7% |
| ≥ £67,669 | 12.5% |
How much will I contribute if I live in Scotland?
The contribution rates are slightly different for Scotland and are, at time of writing, as follows:
| Updated Pay Range | Contribution rates (on pensionable pay) |
| ≤ £13,330 | 5.7% |
| £13,331 – £27,940 | 6.4% |
| £27,941 – £33,062 | 7% |
| £33,063 – £41,482 | 8.7% |
| £41,483 – £43,502 | 9.8% |
| £43,503 – £52,879 | 10.5% |
| £52,880 – £57,223 | 11.2% |
| £57,224 – £80,025 | 11.6% |
| ≥ £80,026 | 12.7% |
More information here.
What about if I’m part time?
Your contributions to the NHS Pension will be based on actual earnings for any given year. If you happen to pick up extra shifts above your contracted hours up to your ‘Full-Time Equivalent’ (the number of hours a fully employed doctor would work), then this may cause you to move into a different contribution band as above, which should be paid from the next month’s payroll directly.
If the contributions haven’t been taken as above, then you can make an ‘election’ which means you can personally pay the difference in contributions for those additional hours and therefore it will be accounted for in your Pension upon retirement. Note that this affects members of the NHS Pension who:
- Have worked part-time post 1st April 2015
- Have worked any additional hours from 1st April 2015 – 31st March 2024
- Have not yet paid the additional contributions for those hours.
If you meet the above and do not wish to ‘pension’ the additional hours then no action is needed but if you DO want to pension the hours, you have 3 months to do so.
