Correspondence

Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration remit letter: 2026 to 2027

Published 22 July 2025

Mark Hoble
Chair, Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration
Office of Manpower Economics
First floor, 10 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0NB

Dear Mr Hoble,

I would firstly like to welcome you as the new chair of the Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) starting on 1 August. I am looking forward to engaging with you in due course and to the leadership you will bring to the process.

I would also like to offer my thanks to the DDRB for their work over the past year on the 2025 to 2026 report. I appreciate the independent, expert advice and valuable contribution that the DDRB makes. I am still considering the further non-headline pay recommendations made in that report and will respond to these as soon as possible.

I write to you now to formally commence the 2026 to 2027 pay round.

On 3 July, we published our 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future. This plan seeks to make 3 big shifts from hospital to community, sickness to prevention, and analogue to digital, and sets the context for the pay round. A valued, motivated and skilled NHS workforce is essential to delivering our plan, which is why we will publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan to create a more empowered workforce ready to deliver a transformed service.

To support this, we are taking steps to address the legitimate concerns that doctors have raised about their working conditions. As a first step for resident doctors, over the next 3 years we will create 1,000 new training posts and will prioritise UK medical graduates. We have already made progress on improving working lives, including developing a new exception reporting process to improve safe working and undertaking a review into how we make the rotational element of training less disruptive to the personal lives of resident doctors. This government has also worked closely with the unions to implement the consultant deal and is continuing its work implementing the specialist and associate specialist (SAS) deal that was agreed last year.

We were pleased to be able to accept your recommendations for 2025 to 2026 pay awards. However, it came in above the figures we set out as affordable within evidence.  Over the past few months, we have identified how extra funds will be freed up by cutting duplication and waste, and through abolishing NHS England, and reshaping and reducing integrated care board (ICB) costs by 50% to empower NHS staff and deliver better care for patients. As the Spending Review confirmed, all pay must be funded from departmental budgets and there will be no additional funding available for pay settlements. My department’s evidence will set out the funds available to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for 2026 to 2027, following the Spending Review last month, as well as the recruitment and retention context alongside, earnings data and our plan for building an NHS fit for the future.

We know that public sector workers delivering our vital public services deserve timely pay awards. We announced 2025 to 2026 pay awards 2 months earlier than last year and remain committed to bringing 2026 to 2027 pay announcements forwards further. That is why we are launching this pay round 2 months earlier than the previous pay round.

I would be grateful if you could support an earlier pay announcement by submitting your report at the earliest point that allows you to give due consideration to the relevant evidence. I recognise that changing the timeline from recent years will present challenges for you, but I am sure you also share the government’s belief in the importance of returning to more timely annual pay processes. To enable you to submit your report earlier, our department will aim to co-operate with all your deadlines and bring the evidence process forward.

As always, while your remit covers the whole of the United Kingdom, it is for each administration to make its own decisions on its approach to this year’s pay round and to communicate this to you directly.

I would like to thank you again for your and the review body’s invaluable contribution to the pay round and look forward to receiving your report for 2026 to 2027 in due course.

Yours ever,

Rt Hon Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care