Plan NHS High Cost Area Supplement, London weighting-style pay, Agenda for Change salary, and take-home pay.
The High Cost Area Supplement, usually called London weighting, is a percentage of basic salary with both a cash floor and a cash ceiling, set separately for inner London, outer London and the fringe. Those bounds are why it is not a flat uplift: in the lower bands the floor is worth more than the percentage would be, and in the senior bands the ceiling holds it well below.
Pick your area and enter basic salary. The supplement has a cash floor and ceiling, so the effective percentage moves with the band.
The full 20% applies: between the £5,794 minimum and the £8,746 maximum.
Pension is taken at the 8.3% tier on basic pay. The supplement is a percentage of basic salary with a cash minimum and maximum, so it is not a flat uplift. Whether it counts towards pensionable pay is not stated by the NHS Employers pay scales or the NHSBSA allowance article, so the pension figure here is taken from basic pay only — check your payslip or NHS Pensions if that matters to you.
| Tax/source year | 2026/27 |
|---|---|
| Region | England/Wales/Northern Ireland |
| Tax code basis | 1257L where the page uses PAYE defaults |
| Pension basis | No pension deduction unless this example says otherwise |
| Student loan basis | No student loan unless selected in this example |
| What is not decided here | PayBreakdown does not decide payroll correctness, lender approval, benefit entitlement or employer compliance, and does not give regulated financial, mortgage, debt, tax, payroll or legal advice. |
|---|
The figures on this page are worked from NHS HCAS, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
A high cost area supplement is a percentage of base pay, but it is floored and capped in cash. That is what makes it behave unlike every other percentage on an NHS payslip.
Below the floor salary the supplement pays the minimum regardless of the percentage. Above the ceiling salary it stops growing. Between the two it is the flat percentage.
| Zone | Percentage of base pay | Minimum a year | Maximum a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inner London | 20% | £5,794 | £8,746 |
| Outer London | 15% | £4,870 | £6,137 |
| Fringe | 5% | £1,346 | £2,270 |
Inner London is 20% of base pay, capped at £8,746. The cap is reached at a base salary of about £43,730, and above that the supplement does not grow at all.
So a band 9 nurse and a band 7 nurse in the same hospital can receive the same supplement in pounds, and the band 9 is receiving a smaller share of their salary. The headline percentage is the ceiling of what you get, not what you get.
Below about £28,970 the opposite applies: the floor pays more than the percentage would, so the effective rate is higher than 20%.
This estimate is worked out on £31,049 annual gross. Change any of those and the take-home figure moves; pension method and student loan plan usually move it most. A payslip can differ from any calculator because payroll works pay period by pay period, so a tax-code change, a bonus, arrears or a refund can land in one month and not the next. See how each deduction is worked out.
No. It is an estimate worked from published HMRC and GOV.UK figures for the current tax year, using the assumptions shown on this page. It cannot see your tax code history, benefits in kind or employer payroll rules, so check important decisions against your payslip, official guidance or a qualified adviser.
Yes. Open the linked calculator to change the salary, pension, tax code, region or student loan plan and the figures update as you type.
Last updated 2026-08-27. Checked by Sean Elsmore. Rates last checked against GOV.UK on 2026-08-07. Estimates are for planning and should be checked against official records where the decision matters.