Nursing Careers UK

Job market

Adult Nurse jobs in the UK

Adult Nurses usually start on NHS band 5, which pays £32,073 in England for 2026/27, 228 NHS organisations of the kinds that employ them sit across 12 regions and nations. What a first post involves, who hires in each region, what it pays there, and where the vacancies are actually advertised.

Band 5 entryNMC registration required
£32,073 Band 5 starting salary England, 2026/27, before London weighting
£39,043 Top of band 5 England, 2026/27
Not published On the UK register No register count is published for this title
Not published Published NHS workforce No employer publishes a workforce return for this profession
3 Approved courses The pipeline feeding this labour market

What a first adult nurse post looks like

Almost every newly qualified adult nurse post in the NHS is advertised at band 5, and band 5 means the same thing everywhere: £32,073 at the bottom of the band rising to £39,043 at the top in England for 2026/27. Employers cannot pay above the band to compete for you, so what actually differs between two adverts at the same band is the work, the supervision and the place.

A first post is usually rotational. You are appointed to the department rather than to one clinical area, and you move through a fixed sequence of placements — commonly general medicine, surgery and a specialist ward, all within one acute trust — spending a set spell in each before moving on. The point of it is breadth: you finish the rotation having practised across the range, which is what lets you choose a specialty at band 6 on the basis of experience rather than guesswork. It also means the size and case mix of the employer matters more than the wording of the advert. A large acute trust can offer rotations that a small organisation simply does not hold.

Whichever shape the post takes, the first year is a preceptorship year in all but name. Most employers run a structured programme for newly qualified staff — protected supervision, a competency framework and a named practice educator — and the quality of that programme varies far more between organisations than the pay does. It is a fair thing to ask about before you accept, and a better basis for choosing than the job title.

What it pays across the four nations

Each nation publishes its own Agenda for Change circular, so the figures diverge. Registration is UK-wide, so these are genuinely comparable options.

Agenda for Change pay for the bands an adult nurse works through
Nation Pay year Band 5 start Band 6 start Band 7 top
England 2026/27 £32,073 £39,959 £56,515
Northern Ireland 2025/26 £31,049 £38,682 £54,710
Scotland 2026/27 £34,544 £43,231 £61,466
Wales 2026/27 £32,557 £40,559 £57,365

Posts in the Inner London high cost area zone add 20% of basic pay on top , with a floor of £5,794 and a ceiling of £8,746 (2026/27). See the London page for how that changes the comparison.

Regulator
NMC
Protected title
Nurse, Registered nurse and Adult nurse
Usual entry band
Band 5
SOC 2020 code
2237
Professional body
Royal College of Nursing
Common settings
NHS acute trust wards, outpatient clinics, patients' homes, community health teams and GP practices

Where the employers are

NHS organisations of a type that employs adult nurses, the approved courses in the same region, and what band 5 pays under that nation’s pay circular. The largest field of nursing practice, so posts exist across almost every organisation type — acute wards and outpatient clinics carry the largest numbers, with community trusts and GP practices employing adult nurses in home and primary care settings too.

Adult Nurse employers, courses and pay by region
Region Nation NHS organisations Approved courses Published workforce (FTE) Band 5 start Median full-time pay
North West England 30 1 Not published £32,073 Not published
London England 29 1 Not published £32,073 Not published
South East England 28 1 Not published £32,073 Not published
West Midlands England 23 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
Scotland Scotland 21 0 Not published £34,544 Not published
Yorkshire and The Humber England 21 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
East of England England 19 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
South West England 17 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
East Midlands England 15 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
Wales Wales 11 0 Not published £32,557 Not published
North East England 9 0 Not published £32,073 Not published
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland 5 0 Not published £31,049 Not published

Organisation counts are the NHS bodies in the dataset whose type plausibly employs this profession. They are not vacancy counts, and a large organisation may hold many posts while a small one holds none. The full-time equivalent column sums only the organisations that publish a workforce return for this profession, so it is a floor rather than a total. Median full-time pay is the ONS whole-economy figure for the region, not an NHS figure — it is here as the benchmark to read a band against.

Where the actual vacancies are

This page carries no live adverts. The NHS Jobs adverts API is authenticated and publishes no terms of reuse, and the commercial aggregators attach conditions an open-data site cannot meet honestly, so rather than show you a partial or stale list, here is where employers actually post adult nurses vacancies.

NHS Jobs

Search "Nurse" and filter by band. This is where NHS England trusts advertise, and for most of them it is the only place.

England

HealthJobsUK / Trac

The recruitment system many trusts and health boards run on. Search it separately — it does not mirror NHS Jobs, and some organisations post only here.

EnglandWales

NHS Scotland recruitment

One shared national system for all NHS Scotland boards. Scottish posts do not appear on NHS Jobs at all.

Scotland

HSC Recruitment

Health and Social Care Northern Ireland recruits centrally for the six HSC trusts and the ambulance service.

Northern Ireland

Royal College of Nursing

The professional body for adult nurses. Professional bodies carry specialist and non-NHS vacancies that never reach a general board, alongside preceptorship and first-post guidance for new registrants.

RCN

Find an apprenticeship

An apprenticeship is a job, so it is advertised as a vacancy rather than listed as a course. One standard lead to registration by this route.

England

More on adult nurses

Job markets for related professions

Where this page’s data comes from

Vacancy sources are listed because this page describes their licence position. No live advert content is republished here.