Following the agreement reached in July the UK Government made a firm commitment: if the Offer in Principle was ratified by BMA’s resident membership by mid September, the agreed uplift and backpay would be actioned in the November 2024 pay packet. The timing of that commitment ensured that it informed decisions by membership during the Offer Ballot.
The Government’s commitment was reiterated throughout the intervening months. The umbrella organisation NHS Employers produced detailed advice for Trusts to prepare for backpay.
As made clear in that guidance, the vast majority of calculations were performed through NHS ESR, with a small residual at Trust level around parental leave calculation, annual pensionable pay, and ensuring up-to-date details for leavers. The scope of these tasks has been public since July, and employers were warned, particularly around their obligation to actively seek updated information for payment of leavers August 16th.
When individual employers issued communications breaching the Government’s commitment over the last month, the BMA escalated rapidly to both NHS Employers and Department of Health and Social Care, collating evidence gathered by members, local and regional representatives, national committee and BMA staff, and IROs.
We were assured that the commitment would be met.
As we now approach the end of November, an increasing swell of excuses are being released by delinquent employers, attempting to evade the responsibility for payment entirely, or attempting to push payment in the New Year. These excuses are not credible.
The overriding priority is to ensure that resident doctors receive the backpay and uplift settlements that they are owed, in full, and on time. As soon as we became aware of these issues, we strongly pushed back both locally and nationally. Pressure on employers from grassroots members, local, regional and national reps, and pressure on Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Employers from BMA national reps and staff has since consistently been applied. Despite reassurances provided and the fact that they have tried to intervene to remove local blocks, we are greatly disappointed that decisive action was not taken earlier by those overseeing the implementations.
Up until the last minute, we are fighting trusts to ensure that every resident doctor receives their full entitlements in November.
It has now become evident that some trusts will fail to meet their obligations by not paying full back pay entitlements on time. We have called for solutions like partial payments in November with the remaining arrears to be paid in early December via the use of individualised BACS (on-demand) payments to ensure that all doctors receive the uplift as soon as possible. In the absence of contrary evidence, this represents failure in preparation, resource allocation and contingency planning on the part of employers, and failure of enforcement of the commitment by Government, and runs the risk of a marked reduction in trust in ongoing and future negotiations.
It is fundamentally unfair that members must suffer as a direct result of employer failures. We will hold trusts accountable for prompt payment of all outstanding backpay coupled with detailed public review of both the precipitants of failure and intended corrective and restitutive actions.
If you find yourself in this situation, there are a number of things you can do:
Use our template letter to email your employer if you haven’t received your backpay (to be sent to HR or payroll or both).
Report your issue via the BMA’s online portal.
Get in touch with your IRO/regional rep to discuss what remediation actions you can demand from trusts. Examples include:
- Process 80% of the payment in November payroll.
- Request full BACS payment before Christmas, within 14 calendar days or whichever is soonest.
- For those who need maternity or paternity recalculations, these too should be made before Christmas by individual BACS payments if necessary.