Pay review bodies’ recommendations should be a catalyst to workforce reform

The government has announced pay rises for public sector workers – accepting most of the recommendations from a myriad of independent pay review bodies ranging from 3.25% (for senior civil servants and NHS managers) to 5.4% (resident doctors in the NHS). But on their own the headline figures obscure both the good work of the review bodies and that the government will still need to take some big strategic decisions about public sector workforces.

Pay review bodies have grounded a febrile debate

The eight independent pay review bodies (PRBs) make recommendations on the pay of around half of all public sector workers (local government employees and most civil servants don’t have a PRB). While each has their own quirks, they broadly operate in the same way: they take evidence from government and stakeholders, and examine workforce pressures to decide what pay awards will let them achieve their workforce objectives. Because of their independence – and more prosaically because there are people who can dedicate time to looking at this question – PRBs ground the pay debate in informed analysis.  

That independence is not total, exactly. PRBs have their remits set by the government, and those remits usually require them to take into account the affordability of their recommendations and other government objectives such as the inflation target. PRBs could be more transparent in how they reach their decisions, but nevertheless have played a crucial role in shifting the focus away from the intrinsic worth of public sector jobs (impossible to measure) to a more impartial analysis of the factors that affect public sector workforces and the pay needed to sustain them. The government is right to both maintain their independence and draw on their expertise.

The government should have a strong case for averting further industrial action  

Despite the government accepting recommendations well above what it had deemed affordable (a 2.8% increase for most departments), there were still rumblings of discontent from unions. Most notable of these is the British Medical Association (BMA), which confirmed that it would ballot resident doctors for renewed strike action.  

This is perhaps not surprising. Unions exist to negotiate the best possible pay and conditions for their members – and the BMA resident doctors’ committee has proved that it is very willing to strike over pay.  

The government will desperately want to avoid industrial action; the lesson from the last government is that strikes harm performance. And ministers can make a good case to the BMA. The PRB recommended 5.4% is not to be sniffed at: far above the 3.6% for nurses and other hospital staff, despite doctors earning more than most of those groups. It can also argue that in such a tight fiscal environment, higher pay deals will mean cuts elsewhere in NHS spending – which will affect doctors’ work, even if not financially.

Resident doctors’ pay increased faster than any other staff group in 2024. And when the BMA ended the strike in July last year, it acknowledged that pay restoration would be a “journey” ¹³ https://www.bma.org.uk/our-campaigns/resident-doctor-campaigns/pay-in-england/offer-from-government-for-resident-doctors-in-england-faqs  that would take several years to achieve. It’s hard to see this year’s settlement as anything other than another step on that journey. The public would appear to agree: YouGov reports that only 39% of people support a doctors strike in May 2025, ¹⁴ https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2025/05/27/afee1/2  down from 52% in June 2024. ¹⁵ https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/06/28/886c4/2  

By providing an independent analysis, PRBs have brought clarity to the drivers of workforce pressures. The headlines have focused on pay awards, but – as the PRBs identify – there are more levers the government has to hand to improve workforce relations, and to avert industrial action.  

Pay is not the only way

PRBs broadly do what they say on the tin – they review pay. They are asked to do so with regard to, among other things, the recruitment, retention and motivation of public sector workers. While pay awards have a big effect on the workforce, awards themselves will not resolve longstanding issues.  

The senior civil service (SCS) is a case in point. The Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) has said “SCS pay is broken” ¹⁶ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/682f20dec054883884bff424/SSRB_47th_Report_2025_Web_Accessible.pdf  – not as a comment on pay awards, where the government has tended to accept their recommendations over time, but on a system that creates perverse incentives that damage the civil service. Churn and grade inflation are up because civil servants can’t get pay progression in their roles, regardless of how well they perform; junior staff can end up on higher salaries than the SCS; and there is no coherent strategy for the size, structure, or purpose of the SCS.  

This year’s SSRB report read: “The lack of meaningful progress over an extended period to address this Review Body’s long-standing concerns is a source of considerable frustration”. Put more simply: the SSRB has lost patience with the government. It has taken the unusual step this year of recommending a fundamental review and reset of SCS reward. The government – which originally intended to publish an SCS reward strategy only in 2030 – has taken them up, and will submit evidence to them as part of next year’s round.  

It can be tempting for governments to dodge such reforms, and this might be  especially true of this Labour government – it could seem indulgent to increase high earners’ pay while cutting disability benefits and keeping the two-child limit. But ignoring systemic reward issues is a false economy. The government wants to reduce what it spends on the civil service, and grade inflation has contributed to the overall pay bill hitting 2010 levels again, despite each grade being paid less in real terms.  

The Pay Review Bodies have shown their worth in grounding the pay debate in considered analysis of workforce pressures, and in highlighting wider structural problems, in particular this round in the senior civil service. Decisions on pay and reward ultimately – and rightly – remain in the government’s hands. But the PRBs have opened the door to much-needed reform of workforce rewards; it’s up to the government to walk through it.