Council pay scales 2026/27
The National Joint Council sets what each spine point is worth. Every council decides which points its own grades cover, so "what does Grade F pay" only has an answer per employer. These are councils' own published structures.
Read the spine first
Most councils pay the same national spine: £25,614 at spine point 3 up to £56,293 at point 43, agreed from 1 April 2026. Each card below shows what that council itself has published, with the date it published it, which for most of them is still 1 April 2025 - so those figures are lower than the national range just quoted, and the award is owed on top of them. The 3.3% award for 2026/27 settled in August 2026, backdated to 1 April 2026, and the NJC published the uplifted spine on 24 August 2026; where a council has been slow to restate its scales the rise reaches staff as arrears. What differs between them is three things: which points each grade covers, how many hours count as a full-time week, and whether there are local points above the top of the spine. A minority are outside the spine altogether and set their own pay, which is a bigger difference than any of those.
The full NJC pay spine, the 2026/27 points and how the award was settled →
Birmingham pay scales
6 grades, Grade A to Grade 7, spine points 3 to 58. Full-time week 36.5 hours.
£24,796 to £85,845
As published by the council, 1 April 2025 - the 3.3% award is owed on top
Cardiff pay scales
10 grades, Grade 1 to Grade 10, spine points 3 to 40. Full-time week 37 hours.
£24,796 to £51,356
As published by the council, 1 April 2025 - the 3.3% award is owed on top
Durham pay scales
16 grades, Grade 1 to Grade 16, spine points 3 to 49. Full-time week 37 hours.
£25,614 to £62,682
As published by the council, 1 April 2026
Kent pay scales
18 grades, KSA to KSR, the Kent Scheme, on steps. Full-time week 37 hours.
£26,168 to £256,443
Local scheme, 2026/27 settled
Manchester pay scales
12 grades, Grade 1 to Grade 12, spine points 3 to 51. Full-time week 35 hours.
£24,796 to £64,927
As published by the council, 1 April 2025 - the 3.3% award is owed on top
Tameside pay scales
14 grades, Grade A to Grade N, spine points 3 to 59. Full-time week 36 hours.
£24,796 to £90,305
As published by the council, 1 April 2025 - the 3.3% award is owed on top
Not every council is on the national spine
This matters before you compare an offer against a national pay table, because for several large authorities the spine does not apply, or does not mean what it looks like it means. Kent is the one we hold a page for: it runs the local Kent Scheme, grades KSA to KSR, and settled its own 2026/27 pay months before the national round did. Four more we looked at are outside the national structure and are not published here:
- Lancashire runs its own pay spine. Its published annex numbers points up to SCP 90, far past the national spine's top at SCP 43, and maps its grades to job-evaluation point bands rather than to national spine points, so a Lancashire grade cannot be read off the national table. Its 2026/27 statement publishes no spine at all, and the most recent annex we can find carries a Foundation Living Wage entry effective 1 April 2021, so it is several years old. Pay policy statement 2026/27; Lancashire Pay Spine annex.
- Hampshire runs a local framework of grades A to K on steps, with pay awards following the national outcome for grades up to G. Its published table is still at April 2025 rates. Pay statement 2026/27.
- Essex runs "Essex Pay": each job is assigned a grade and a "rate for the job" through Korn Ferry Hay evaluation. Its pay policy statement points to the council's website for grade detail; the guidance documents it links are staff-only, so there is no public grade table to reproduce. Pay policy statement 2024/25.
- Cornwall left the national grading structure in October 2022 and publishes grade minima and maxima against job-evaluation scores rather than spine points. It still applies the nationally negotiated pay awards, so its ranges move with the NJC settlement even though its grades do not match it. Pay policy statement 2026/27.
Others are on the national spine but do not publish a current priced grade table, so there is nothing to reproduce without inventing it. Leeds is worth knowing about anyway: it is a Real Living Wage employer and pays that rate, £13.45 an hour from 1 April 2026, which is above the bottom of the national spine. Leeds City Council budget announcement.
Comparing two councils
Compare the annual salary and the spine point, not the grade letter or the hourly rate. Grade letters are local labels with no national meaning, and hourly rates depend on each council's full-time week: a council on a 36-hour week publishes a higher hourly figure than one on 37 hours for exactly the same annual pay.