In July 2021 the NHS Staff Council formally recognised that the skills required for the complexity of many of the duties carried out by a majority of band 2 workers were better matched to a band 3 level of responsibility. It urged individual trusts to re-evaluate all their band 2 workers to ascertain whether they were working above their job descriptions, if their banding was correct and whether they were being remunerated for their input at a fair and equitable rate.
The RCN has been working across England at trust level to get band 2s re-banded ever since the NHS Staff Council published newly evaluated role descriptions that more accurately reflected and formally recognised the fact that many band 2s are regularly undertaking patient observations and clinical care such as taking bloods, wound observation and urine analysis – all tasks that are more appropriate for band 3 level roles.
Band 2 remits include a range of personal clinical duties including bathing, oral hygiene and assisting in maintaining nutritional and fluid balance status.
Band 3 duties extend to patient observations, glucose monitoring, and the collection and testing of urine and faecal samples.
Essentially carrying out these tasks means taking on a higher level of responsibility, and staff who carry them out should be recognised and rewarded for doing so.
Huge numbers of band 2s have been effectively working above their pay grade for years.
“The complexity of the knowledge required for the tasks that many band 2s are performing for patients and the level of their responsibilities far exceeds that of a band 2 worker,” said Peta Clark, Operational Manager of the Royal College of Nursing Northern Region.
“Across the region our representatives are working hard with their trusts to agree job re-evaluation and where appropriate, uplifting for their band 2 colleagues as a matter of urgency,” Peta continued.
“With the cost-of-living crisis biting, the price of not valuing these workers’ efforts properly could end up being seriously detrimental to the NHS; with workforce vacancies as high as they are, trusts can ill afford to lose their workers, who if not properly remunerated could ultimately leave to find better paid jobs with employers who value them properly for the important work they do.”
“Our representatives have been working long and hard in collaboration with joint union staffside representatives to reach an agreement with trust management on this issue. On 15 December the trust wrote to its staff to formally announce that a cohort of more than 500 staff will be uplifted to band 3 and backpaid from the date that the NHS Staff Council formally published the new national job profiles back in July 2021, effectively recognising that band 2s have been working above their pay grade.”
“We are delighted that the trust has finally acknowledged that a substantial number of its staff should be paid at band 3 level, and we would particularly like to commend our representative Margaret Wardrobe, who as chair of staff side has been leading health unions in collectively pushing the trust management hard to negotiate for this uplift in banding and pay for their members, and ensuring that pay is backdated to July 2021, reflecting the fact that these staff have been undertaking work above their current banding for a substantial amount of time.”
“The NHS may be strapped for cash, but trusts should not be saving money by paying some of their lowest paid staff unfairly in full knowledge that they deserve more,” continued Peta.
The trusts estimates that its payroll department will take between 4 and 6 months to complete the process of upbanding, which it will tackle in batches of between 100 and 150 staff a month.
This achievement by staff side is the second in recent years, coming hot on the heels of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s uplifting of its band 2s in November, a collaborative achievement led by another RCN staff side chair, Roaqah Shaher.
The first trust to uplift a swath of band 2s was also a northern region trust. Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust examined its jobs closely as part of a merger in 2006 and discovered that its band 2 job descriptions did not reflect the complexity of the tasks its support workers were performing. The RCN’s longest-standing rep, Gordon Lees, was heavily involved in the successful upbanding of a large number of band 2s way back at the time, so TEWV could be said to be something of a pioneer on this issue.
