UK Civil Service Pay 2026/27: Grades, Bands & Take-Home
UK Civil Service pay 2026/27: department medians by grade, SCS pay bands, alpha pension contributions and what each grade takes home after tax.
Overview of UK Civil Service pay
Civil Service pay in the United Kingdom is not set on the open market and is not set on a single national scale either. It is a hybrid: Cabinet Office publishes an annual Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance that caps the growth in each department's paybill for its delegated-grade staff, and each department then decides its own pay award and band structure within that cap. The result is that two civil servants doing comparable work at the same grade in different departments are paid differently. How differently is measurable: taking each department and organisation as a whole, the Grade 6/7 median runs from £58,300 at UK Statistics Authority to £89,790 at Estyn, and among the nine departments here from £62,340 to £68,320.
The delegated grades (AA, AO, EO, HEO, SEO, Grade 7, Grade 6) cover everyone below the Senior Civil Service. The grade structure is uniform across the Civil Service even though pay scales are not: an HEO at the Cabinet Office is doing the same level of work as an HEO at DEFRA, with comparable line management responsibility and policy ownership, regardless of the difference in their base salary. The Senior Civil Service (Pay Band 1 Deputy Director, Band 2 Director, Band 3 Director General, plus the closed Band 1A) is non-delegated: its pay is set centrally after recommendations from the Senior Salaries Review Body, which the Government accepted in part for 2026/27. Permanent Secretary pay is considered separately by the Permanent Secretary Remuneration Committee.
The 2025/26 pay remit guidance, published 22 May 2025, allowed a headline award of up to 3.25% with a further 0.5% available for targeted purposes. For 2026/27 the guidance was published on 21 May 2026 and sets the Increase in Remuneration Cost at a maximum of 3.5% for grades below the Senior Civil Service, within which each department decides how to target its award. The Senior Civil Service is explicitly outside that remit and is handled separately. Pay figures on this page are the published medians as at 31 March 2026 and the Senior Civil Service ranges in force from 1 April 2026. Every figure cites its underlying gov.uk publication or Civil Service Pension Scheme reference at the bottom of the page; the alpha pension contribution rates are taken from the Civil Service Pensions website and re-verified each year against the most recent member factsheet.
Grade structure and pay bands
Pay below the Senior Civil Service is delegated: each department sets its own ranges inside a cap that Cabinet Office expresses as a paybill measure, not as an individual's rise. For 2026/27 that cap, the Increase to Remuneration Cost, is 3.5%. There is therefore no national pay scale to publish for AA to Grade 6, and any page that shows you one has made it up. What is published is the median at each level, and how far departments sit either side of it.
Delegated grades (AA to Grade 6), medians as at 31 March 2026
| Grade | Whole-service median | Lowest department or body | Highest department or body |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA / AO | £28,020 | £25,500 UK Statistics Authority | £31,990 Ministry of Justice |
| EO | £32,140 | £26,950 Ofqual | £43,280 National Crime Agency |
| SEO / HEO | £43,930 | £38,020 Ofgem | £54,730 Ofsted |
| Grade 6 / 7 | £65,830 | £58,300 UK Statistics Authority | £89,790 Estyn |
These are medians of what people were actually paid on 31 March 2026, not band minima and maxima, and they already contain whatever awards had landed by that date. SEO and HEO are published as one combined level, so no separate HEO median exists. The lowest and highest columns compare departments and organisations as a whole (the rows the table labels "Overall"); individual agencies inside a department run wider than this at every level.
Senior Civil Service pay ranges from 1 April 2026
SCS pay is not delegated, so this one genuinely is a published scale: Cabinet Office sets a single set of ranges for the whole UK with no separate London band. The 2026/27 award is 2.5% consolidated on base pay, backdated to 1 April 2026, with a further 1% of the SCS paybill set aside for performance-based progression. Anything above £174,000 needs Treasury Senior Pay Control approval.
| Band | Role | UK-wide range |
|---|---|---|
| SCS Pay Band 1 | Deputy Director | £86,000 to £117,800 |
| SCS Pay Band 1A | Closed to new recruitment | £86,000 to £128,900 |
| SCS Pay Band 2 | Director | £105,000 to £162,500 |
| SCS Pay Band 3 | Director General | £135,000 to £208,100 |
Sources: Cabinet Office - Civil Service Statistics 2026, Table 25 for the delegated-grade medians, Cabinet Office - Guidance on the Senior Civil Service Pay Award 2026/27 for the SCS ranges, and Cabinet Office - Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance 2026 to 2027 for the cap. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
Department variance: what the published table actually shows
The department you work for moves your pay, but not by as much as the internet believes, and not in the same direction at every grade. These are the 2026/27 medians for the nine departments here as at 31 March 2026, from the same published table.
| Department | AA / AO | EO | SEO / HEO | Grade 6 / 7 | All grades |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | £28,090 | £32,560 | £45,200 | £66,130 | £60,670 |
| Dept for Education | £27,240 | £31,480 | £42,810 | £62,340 | £49,000 |
| Cabinet Office | £27,410 | £31,010 | £38,600 | £65,050 | £47,670 |
| Ministry of Defence | £29,030 | £31,440 | £45,550 | £65,560 | £39,120 |
| Home Office | £27,550 | £35,410 | £46,270 | £68,320 | £39,000 |
| HMRC | £28,020 | £32,230 | £40,520 | £64,620 | £37,680 |
| Ministry of Justice | £31,990 | £33,550 | £43,840 | £65,330 | £35,530 |
| DWP | £27,840 | £32,140 | £39,600 | £62,970 | £32,140 |
| Dept for Transport | £26,610 | £30,960 | £41,940 | £63,640 | £31,600 |
At Grade 6/7 the nine departments span £62,340 at Dept for Education to £68,320 at Home Office, a gap of £5,980. That is a real difference and worth knowing before you apply, but it is a long way from the £15,000-to-£20,000 same-grade gap that gets repeated in forums. Across every department and organisation taken as a whole the Grade 6/7 spread is wider, £58,300 at UK Statistics Authority to £89,790 at Estyn, because smaller bodies sit at both ends, and individual agencies within departments run wider again.
The bigger story in the table is not the grade rows at all, it is the last column. HM Treasury has an all-grades median of £60,670 against Dept for Transport's £31,600, and yet their AA/AO medians are within £1,480 of each other. The difference is grade mix, not generosity: a small policy department is mostly Grade 7s and above, while an operational department is mostly AO and EO. Reading the all-grades median as "what this department pays" is the single most common mistake made with this table.
DWP is the clearest case. Its all-grades median of £32,140 is identical to its EO median, which tells you where the middle of that workforce sits: an organisation running the benefits system needs tens of thousands of operational staff, so the midpoint of the whole department lands on an operational grade rather than a professional one.
Departmental pay deals are published as a formal pay agreement, usually via the relevant trade union (PCS, FDA, Prospect) or a Cabinet Office written statement. The agreement sets the consolidated uplift, any progression payments for staff below the top of band, structural changes such as the deletion of a low pay point, and the cash value of any non-consolidated payment. Because the 2026/27 cap is a paybill measure, a department can spend it on a flat percentage for everyone or target it at the grades it struggles to recruit, which is why two departments under the same 3.5% ceiling can hand out visibly different rises.
Take-home at each published median
Figures below show gross to take-home with full Personal Allowance, no student loan and a 0% pension baseline so the underlying tax and NI mechanics are visible. In practice the alpha pension contribution (4.60% to 8.05% depending on pensionable earnings) would deduct further from cash take-home but adds a guaranteed inflation-linked deferred income. Computed via our HMRC-verified salary engine, England 2026/27 rates.
| Grade | Gross | Income Tax | NI | Annual take-home | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA / AO median | £28,020 | £3,090 | £1,236 | £23,694 | £1,975 |
| EO median | £32,140 | £3,914 | £1,566 | £26,660 | £2,222 |
| SEO / HEO median | £43,930 | £6,272 | £2,509 | £35,149 | £2,929 |
| Grade 6 / 7 median | £65,830 | £13,764 | £3,327 | £48,739 | £4,062 |
| SCS Pay Band 1 minimum | £86,000 | £21,832 | £3,731 | £60,437 | £5,036 |
How much of a London range reaches the bank depends on where it sits against the thresholds: below £50,270 an extra pound of base pay is taxed at 20% with 8% National Insurance, and above it at 40% with 2%, so the same gross uplift is worth noticeably less to a Grade 7 than to an Executive Officer. The size of that uplift is a departmental matter and is not published centrally.
The alpha pension scheme
Every civil servant who joined on or after 1 April 2015 is enrolled in alpha, and since 1 April 2022 all pensionable service for members who were still in the legacy schemes has also been built up in alpha, under the 2015 (McCloud) remedy. Alpha is a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) defined benefit pension scheme. The Cabinet Office is the scheme manager, and the scheme administrator is Capita Pension Solutions Limited. Each year a member earns a pension equal to 2.32% of their pensionable earnings for that year. The accrued amount is revalued annually in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measured to the September before the start of the new scheme year. Normal Pension Age in alpha tracks State Pension Age (currently 66, rising to 67 between 2026 and 2028, with a further rise to 68 legislated for 2044 to 2046), which is notably later than the legacy classic and premium schemes: classic closed to new entrants from 1 October 2002 and premium from 30 July 2007.
Employee contributions are tiered by pensionable earnings. For 2026/27 only the lowest threshold moved; the £56,000 and £150,000 thresholds are the same as in every year the scheme has published since 2022/23. The current bands and rates are:
| Pensionable earnings band | Contribution rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £36,199 | 4.60% |
| £36,200 to £56,000 | 5.45% |
| £56,001 to £150,000 | 7.35% |
| Over £150,000 | 8.05% |
The contribution is deducted under the net-pay arrangement: it comes out of pensionable pay before Income Tax is applied, so the member receives full Income Tax relief at their marginal rate without needing to claim relief separately through Self Assessment. National Insurance relief is not given on net-pay pension contributions (only on salary-sacrifice arrangements). Someone on the Grade 6/7 median of £65,830 pays 7.35% and contributes £4,839 a year before tax; at the 40% marginal rate that costs £2,903 net.
The employer contribution rate is reviewed at each actuarial valuation of the scheme, which is carried out under HM Treasury directions (Public Service Pensions Act 2013, s.11). The most recent employer rate the scheme publishes is 28.97% of pensionable pay, paid by the department. Combined with the employee contribution, which runs 4.6% to 8.05% depending on tier, total contributions to the scheme exceed 33% of pensionable pay, against a legal minimum of 8% in total for an auto-enrolment workplace pension. A civil servant on £65,830 effectively receives an additional £19,071 a year in deferred employer pension contribution, which does not appear on the payslip but accrues toward a guaranteed inflation-linked retirement income.
Extra saving goes through the Civil Service Additional Voluntary Contribution Scheme, invested with Legal & General. AVCs sit alongside the alpha defined benefit and build a separate invested pot. The scheme describes them as deducted from pay by your employer, with tax relief on your contributions; it does not describe a salary-sacrifice route, so ask your department before assuming one exists.
Moving up the grades
The steps below are between published medians at each level, not a timetable: how long each takes depends entirely on the department, the profession and whether posts come up, and nothing published sets a standard progression. Take-home figures use England 2026/27 rates with a 0% pension baseline so the gross-to-cash mechanics at each step are visible. Alpha pension contributions (4.60% to 8.05% of pensionable earnings) would deduct further at each step.
| Grade | Gross | Income Tax | NI | Annual take-home | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA / AO (median) | £28,020 | £3,090 | £1,236 | £23,694 | £1,975 |
| EO (median) | £32,140 | £3,914 | £1,566 | £26,660 | £2,222 |
| SEO / HEO (median) | £43,930 | £6,272 | £2,509 | £35,149 | £2,929 |
| Grade 6 / 7 (median) | £65,830 | £13,764 | £3,327 | £48,739 | £4,062 |
| SCS Pay Band 1 (minimum) | £86,000 | £21,832 | £3,731 | £60,437 | £5,036 |
Each step here is between published medians rather than between pay points, because there are no points to step between: the whole-service median at one level to the whole-service median at the next. The largest step in the table is SEO / HEO to Grade 6 / 7: £21,900 of gross but £13,590 of take-home, about 62% of the step, because the step crosses the £50,270 higher-rate threshold, and the part above it is taxed at 40% with 2% National Insurance instead of 20% with 8%. The table is on a 0% pension baseline, so alpha plays no part in these steps. Note that Grade 6 and Grade 7 are one published level, so no Grade 7 to Grade 6 step exists in this data.
London pay, and what can honestly be said about it
Where a department pays more in London through a higher pay range, the London figure is simply higher base pay: taxable, NIable and pensionable on exactly the same basis as the national one. That is why the difference in take-home is always smaller than the difference in gross, and why more of it survives at the lower grades, where each extra pound is taxed at basic rate and main-rate National Insurance rather than at 40% plus 2%.
What cannot be said honestly is how big the gap is. Table 25 breaks pay down by grade and by organisation and has no location split at all, and each department sets its own ranges under its own pay deal. This page used to print a national-versus-London comparison at Grade 7; neither figure in it came from a source, and the published medians contradict the reasoning behind them. The range stated on the vacancy is the number to use.
At the Senior Civil Service the question does not arise: those ranges are UK-wide, so a Director General in Edinburgh is on the same band as one in Whitehall.
Comparison vs similar roles
Set against the other public-sector ladders this site publishes, the combined SEO/HEO median of £43,930 lands close to an NHS Band 6 nurse at the intermediate point (£42,170) and sits between main pay range points M5 (£43,529) and M6 (£46,940) for a teacher outside London from 1 September 2026. The Grade 6/7 median of £65,830 sits above NHS Band 8a entry (£57,528). The comparison that matters for take-home is not the gross, though: alpha, the NHS scheme and the Teachers' Pension Scheme are all net pay arrangements with employer contributions far above the private-sector norm, so the same gross buys a materially different total reward than it would outside the public sector.
The pension dominates the total-reward comparison. Alpha takes a member contribution of 4.6% to 8.05% depending on tier, on top of an employer rate of 28.97%. The other public schemes charge members on tiers of their own: 12.88% to 14.22% in the police 2015 scheme, 7.4% to 12% in the Teachers' Pension Scheme and 5.2% to 12.5% in the NHS scheme, each set out on this site's pages for those professions. All four are defined benefit schemes that build a guaranteed inflation-linked income for life, rather than a pot of money exposed to investment risk like an auto-enrolment workplace pension, whose legal minimum contribution is 8% in total.
- UK police officer pay - federated police pay scales, Police Pension 2015 contributions.
- Civil Service Executive Officer (EO) - profession landing for the EO grade.
- Civil Service Higher Executive Officer (HEO) - profession landing for the HEO grade.
- Civil Service Grade 7 - profession landing for the senior policy lead grade.
- NHS Band 7 nurse - NHS Agenda for Change Band 7 pay and take-home.
- Experienced teacher (M6 to UPS3) - main and upper pay range teacher pay and take-home.
- All UK professions - browse the full directory.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a UK civil servant earn in 2026/27?
Cabinet Office publishes medians, not a national scale, because pay below the Senior Civil Service is delegated to departments. As at 31 March 2026 the whole-service medians were £28,020 at AA/AO, £32,140 at EO, £43,930 across the combined SEO/HEO level and £65,830 at Grade 6/7. The Senior Civil Service does have published ranges: Pay Band 1 (Deputy Director) £86,000 to £117,800, Pay Band 2 (Director) £105,000 to £162,500, and Pay Band 3 (Director General) £135,000 to £208,100. Permanent Secretary pay is not published as a band; it is set by the Permanent Secretary Remuneration Committee.
Who sets civil service pay?
Cabinet Office publishes an annual Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance that caps the growth in each department's paybill for the delegated grades (AA through Grade 6). For 2026/27 that cap, the Increase to Remuneration Cost, is a maximum of 3.5%, a budgetary measure rather than anyone's individual rise. Each department decides how to target its own pay award within it, which is why HM Treasury and Cabinet Office pay differs from DWP or HMRC at the same grade. Senior Civil Service pay (Pay Bands 1, 1A, 2 and 3) is set centrally after recommendations from the Senior Salaries Review Body, which the Government accepted in part for 2026/27. Permanent Secretary pay is considered separately by the Permanent Secretary Remuneration Committee.
Is there a London weighting in the Civil Service?
Any extra pay for London is a departmental decision rather than a service-wide rule, unlike police London weighting. How much it is worth is not something this page can tell you honestly: the published statistics give medians by grade and by department, with no London breakdown, and each department sets its own ranges under its own pay deal. Check the pay range on the specific vacancy, which the Civil Service Jobs advert always states, rather than any generic figure.
Why does Treasury pay more than DWP at the same grade?
Each department sets its own pay inside a cap that Cabinet Office expresses as a paybill measure, 3.5% for 2026/27, so the same grade genuinely pays differently in different places. The published gap is smaller than the forum version of it. At Grade 6/7 the nine departments here run from £62,340 at Dept for Education to £68,320 at Home Office, a spread of £5,980 rather than the £15,000 to £20,000 often quoted. Taking every department and organisation as a whole (the published 'Overall' rows), Grade 6/7 medians run from £58,300 at UK Statistics Authority to £89,790 at Estyn, and individual agencies within departments run wider still.
How is take-home pay calculated for civil servants?
Take-home is gross pay minus Income Tax, employee National Insurance (Class 1) and alpha pension contributions. The alpha contribution is deducted under net-pay, so it reduces taxable pay before Income Tax is calculated, giving full Income Tax relief at the marginal rate. National Insurance is charged on the full gross regardless. Someone on the £65,830 Grade 6/7 median takes home £45,836 a year, or £3,820 a month, at the 7.35% alpha rate: £4,839 pension, £11,829 Income Tax and £3,327 National Insurance.
What is the alpha pension scheme?
Alpha is the Civil Service Pension Scheme introduced in April 2015 for all new entrants and most existing members. It is a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) defined benefit scheme with an accrual rate of 2.32% of pensionable earnings each year, revalued annually in line with CPI. Normal Pension Age tracks State Pension Age. Employee contributions are tiered from 4.60% to 8.05% by pensionable earnings; the most recent published employer rate is 28.97% of pensionable pay.
Can civil servants use salary sacrifice for pension?
Alpha contributions are deducted under the net-pay arrangement, which gives Income Tax relief at the marginal rate but not National Insurance relief. Extra saving goes through the Civil Service Additional Voluntary Contribution Scheme, invested with Legal & General: the scheme says your employer can deduct AVCs from your pay and that you receive tax relief on them. It does not describe a salary-sacrifice route for either alpha or AVCs, so ask your department before assuming one exists.
What is the difference between Grade 7 and Grade 6?
Grade 7 is a senior policy or professional lead role, typically responsible for a defined policy area or team of HEO/SEO staff. Grade 6 is the equivalent of Deputy Head and the most senior delegated grade below the Senior Civil Service. The two are published as one combined level in the official statistics, so no separate Grade 6 or Grade 7 median exists, and each department sets its own ranges for both. Both sit under the same Cabinet Office pay remit.
How does Senior Civil Service (SCS) pay work?
SCS pay is not delegated: Cabinet Office publishes one set of ranges for the whole UK with no London weighting. From 1 April 2026 they are £86,000 to £117,800 at Pay Band 1, £105,000 to £162,500 at Pay Band 2 and £135,000 to £208,100 at Pay Band 3, after a 2.5% consolidated increase backdated to that date. A separate Pay Band 1A runs to £128,900. Anything above £174,000 needs Treasury Senior Pay Control approval, and Permanent Secretary pay sits outside this framework.
How does Civil Service pay compare to the private sector?
This page does not put a percentage on the pay gap with the private sector: the published comparisons (for example the Senior Salaries Review Body's, for the Senior Civil Service) use chosen comparator groups rather than a job-for-job match across all grades. The part that can be measured is the pension. alpha employers pay 28.97% of pensionable pay on top of salary, while the legal minimum for an auto-enrolment workplace pension is 3% from the employer and 8% in total. That contribution never appears on a payslip, so comparing gross salaries alone understates the Civil Service package.