Resident doctors in England have marginally voted to accept the government’s pay and jobs offer, bringing three years of strike action in the NHS to an end.

Nearly 33,000 resident doctors voted in a referendum called by the British Medical Association after it cancelled a nationwide strike at the eleventh hour on 13 June and put the government’s latest offer to its members. Almost 53% of members voted in favour of the offer, on a turnout of 57%.

Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said: “Resident doctors have spoken. They have decided that the current offer is sufficient to continue on the road to pay restoration and sufficient to address the absurd lack of jobs in the NHS. The strikes will now end.

“These strikes did not need to happen. We spent far too long at loggerheads with the Government when a solution in everyone’s interest was waiting for us: more jobs for doctors, better pay for doctors, and a better-staffed NHS secured for patients well into the future. This is what constructive negotiations can achieve. Next time we hope they can be done without a single picket line having to form – all it takes is a Government willing to think ahead and think creatively.”

Dean Royles, interim chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “After such a long-running dispute that has caused so much upset and disruption to patient care, all parties will be pleased that a resolution now seems to have been found and there will be no further strike action.

“As always, following the conclusion of negotiations, the hard work of implementation will now begin. The timescales in the deal are ambitious and NHS Employers are committed to continuing to work with the govenment, NHS trusts and the BMA to work through the complexities of the deal as quickly as possible to help bring stability of services and certainty to patients.”

Sir Ciarán Devane, chief executive of the NHS Alliance, said: “This agreement has been a very long time coming and the vote to accept the latest offer will be greatly welcomed by health leaders.

“The resolution of this dispute is particularly timely as the health service looks to build on progress in reducing waiting lists and improving productivity.

“It has now been almost a year since the government published its 10-Year Health Plan to put the NHS on a more sustainable, long-term footing. We must now focus on moving forward and delivering the reforms needed.”

Health secretary James Murray said the end of the industrial dispute was good news for resident doctors, patients and the NHS as a whole. Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, have walked out 15 times since March 2023 in a long-running dispute over pay restoration, with the union claiming their members had seen salaries fall 35% in real terms since 2008.

The previous health secretary, Wes Streeting, offered a 22% pay increase when Labour came to power, which BMA members accepted in September 2024. However, since then, pay recommendations have not met medics’ expectations, and the dispute widened to cover a shortfall of jobs available in the NHS.

The offer accepted by resident doctors includes:

• 4,500 specialty training places over the next three years to tackle the jobs bottleneck
• All locally employed doctors to be offered the terms and conditions of the standard 2016 resident doctor contract
• In combination with this year’s recommendation of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB), an average 6.6% pay uplift, fully delivered by April 2027, with a further uplift in April 2027 following the next DDRB recommendation.
• This would be achieved by faster nodal point reform and pay uplifts twice a year, contingent on career progression
• Exam, portfolio and membership fees covered
• Guaranteed annual career progression for doctors who work less than full-time and meet their competencies
• Increased pay premia for medical academics.

Fletcher added: “This is by no means the end of the road for pay restoration: even with our progress in the last few years, we are still nearly a fifth behind 2008 levels of pay. It will need determination from government to keep this journey going.

“We are putting the pay review process on notice – if it cannot deliver continued pay improvements, then we risk once again falling back into dispute in future. And without genuine delivery on the jobs front, we will once again see training bottlenecks throttling our careers and with it, further discord.”

 

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