Changelog

9/10/2026

• Role-by-role calculator text: maternity, CPD, allowances, career break, promotion timing and reduced hours pages now explain the rules and figures for each role, including up to 26 weeks' full maternity pay for police officers, firefighters and prison and probation staff.
• Promotion timing: the calculator now opens on a better-paid band for your role, and for roles already on the top band in our data it says so and no longer shows a "promotion" back to the bottom of your own band.
• Career break calculator: the return box now says "Step on return" for grades without published pay points, and is replaced by a short note on grades with one rate of pay, where it changed nothing.
• Allowances: the TLR (teaching and learning responsibility) and SEN (special educational needs) allowance boxes are now switched off for heads, deputies, assistant heads and leading practitioners, who cannot receive them, and NHS unsocial hours notes now point to section 2 of the NHS handbook instead of the ambulance-only Annex 5.
• CPD calculator: pages for consultants, GPs, dentists, dental nurses, mental health nurses, health visitors, nursing associates and probation officers now show the CPD rules that actually apply to them, and the housing and fire safety trackers no longer show a second hours target that CIH and the IFE do not set.
• Maternity and paternity: police officers, police staff, firefighters and prison and probation staff now show 26 weeks' full maternity pay, and paternity now matches each scheme (1 week's full pay for councils, police officers and fire, Statutory Paternity Pay only for teachers and police staff).
• Notice and redundancy: statutory redundancy now follows the official rules (2 years' service to qualify, up to 20 years counted at your age in each year, weekly pay capped at £751), and a raw link code on the part-time planning page is now a working link.
• Annual leave and sick pay: 240 more leave and sick pay pages, from nurses and civil servants to firefighters, judges and university lecturers, now explain the rules behind your role, say where they come from and what the calculator figure means for you.
• University annual leave: The seven university leave calculators now start from 35 days plus bank holidays, the sector median for academic staff, instead of 30.
• Part-time hours: every calculator for a role now uses the same full-time week as its annual leave calculator (for example 37 hours for councils and the civil service, 40 for police officers and 42 in fire and rescue), so part-time hours, annualised hours and leave line up.
• Sick pay: civil service sick pay now tops out at 5 months' full pay and 5 months' half pay after four years of service, court staff now follow civil service sick pay while judges' pages explain that their own terms apply, and teachers, council staff and police staff in their first year can now add months of service to see that half pay only starts after four months.
• Annual leave: civil service leave now uses the usual 37-hour week (so 25 days is 185 hours), prison and probation staff each get their own published leave scale, and the hours box now accepts part-time hours such as 22.2.
• Email sign-up: role pages no longer have a sign-up box in the middle of the page; instead the sign-up box, now naming your role, appears on role pages too when you move to leave the page, and the privacy policy says so.
• Role pages: take-home, pay progression and part-time calculators now open with your role's own band, figures and pay dates, role pages explain how that job's pay is set, council annual leave and police officer sick pay pages set out their rules in full, and each calculator has one short disclaimer instead of several repeated warnings.
• Annual leave: council directors and heads of service now see the 30-day minimum set for chief officers by the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC), plus bank holidays, instead of the 25 days that applies to other council staff.

8/10/2026

• Annual leave: part-time leave in hours is no longer cut twice, so 22.2 hours a week on council terms now shows 111 hours of annual leave instead of 66.6.
• Pay data fixes: NHS Bands 3, 4 and 6 to 9 now reach each pay step after the number of years NHS Employers publishes (Band 4 loses an invented middle step), heads of department now start on the teachers' upper pay range rather than the leadership range, and police constable, chief officer and school support staff pages now show the date their pay points apply from.
• Role pages: fixed "a" and "an" before role names, so pages now say "an HEO", "an MOD Engineer", "an FE Lecturer", "a UPS Teacher" and "an Assistant Head".
• School leave and GP pages: headteacher, deputy head and assistant head leave pages no longer show teachers' directed-time limits, every teacher role now gets the school leave guide, and GP partner, dentist and GP practice guide pages no longer show an Agenda for Change label.
• Annual leave guide pages: Annual leave pages for teachers, GPs, practice staff and dentists now explain how leave works for those roles instead of describing a calculator they do not have.
• Calculator pages have a new look: a teal header with a Start calculating button and what you'll find out, a clear "Your results" heading, a "What next?" section with tidier cards, a cleaner sources panel with colour-coded reliability labels, and Download CSV is now the only button in the download box.
• Email sign-up: the Download your results box now sits where the Copy summary and Download CSV buttons were, with a clearer teal design and just your name and email, and role pages, the homepage, the part-time planning journey and tools without a CSV now have a simple sign-up too.
• Take-home examples: the example table on each take-home page now matches the calculator's starting result to the pound, and the assumptions list now says pension comes off before income tax but not before National Insurance (the net pay arrangement), instead of wrongly calling it relief at source.
• NHS London area pay: the NHS allowances calculators now work out the high cost area supplement (HCAS) as 20% of base pay in inner London, 15% in outer London and 5% in the fringe, within each zone's published minimum and maximum, instead of always adding the minimum.
• Take-home pension default: the pension box on take-home calculators now starts at your scheme's 2026/27 member rate for the salary shown and follows the salary until you type your own, with court, probation, PCSO, school support and fire control roles on their own schemes.
• Reduced hours calculators: term-time pay now asks for paid weeks (the weeks you work plus your paid holiday), and the explanation now says full-time pay comes from the band and years you pick or the payslip figure you enter.
• Data sources, privacy and accessibility pages: the data sources page now lists every pay dataset with its publisher, pay year and review date, the privacy policy now mentions the email sign-up box on calculator pages, and the accessibility statement no longer describes an email pop-up that has gone.
• Part-time and reduced hours calculators: the explanation now says full-time pay comes from the band and years you pick (or the payslip figure you enter), and the part-time guide no longer says part-time years count in full for your pension.
• Pay sources: the "Where these figures come from" panel now names the national university pay spine on higher education calculators, no longer calls the published judges' salaries estimates on courts calculators, and links further education calculators to the Association of Colleges.
• Pay progression: bands with one fixed salary (such as judges, NHS Band 2 and some fire and prison grades) now say pay stays the same instead of claiming it steps up, resident doctors are told they reach the top of their scale after 8 years rather than 9, and doctor pages no longer show an explanation of Agenda for Change bands.
• Judge pay: tribunal, district, circuit and High Court judge pages now say judges are paid one salary for their judicial salary group, which rises with the annual pay award or appointment to a higher group rather than through spine points, and pay projections for single-salary bands no longer say pay steps up each year.
• Doctors' London weighting: the junior doctor, registrar, consultant and clinical director allowances calculators can now add London weighting at the rates in the NHS medical and dental pay circular (£2,162 a year in the London zone, £149 in the fringe zone).

7/10/2026

• Sick pay: police officers, and fire and rescue staff on the national fire terms (the Grey Book and Gold Book), now see six months on full pay and six months on half pay from their first day, as their rules give, instead of an entitlement that built up over five years.
• Pension calculators: Teachers' final salary service now uses 1/80th plus an automatic lump sum of 3 times the pension if you were in service before 1/1/2007 and 1/60th otherwise, automatic lump sums are now reduced for early retirement like the pension, and the Police calculator now warns that the 1987 scheme can cap the lump sum at 2.25 times the pension.
• Privacy wording and page titles: calculator FAQs now say that your inputs and results stay in your browser and that we only collect your name and email if you choose to give them, and roles found in more than one organisation now name the organisation in their page titles.

6/10/2026

• Pension calculators: early retirement reductions now apply to each scheme section from its own normal pension age, the lump sum slider now reaches the real scheme maximum (a quarter of the pension's capital value, about 35.7% of a career average pension), Police 1987 service is commuted at the scheme actuary's age-related rate, and school site managers and nursery practitioners now link to the LGPS calculator.
• New logo and homepage redesign: a new calculator logo and site icon, a full-width top band with a worked staff nurse pay example and a cleaner calculator finder, clearer coverage figures, and tidier sections below for common questions, calculator types, sectors, organisations and featured roles. The pay scales line says 2026/27 applies to most sectors and labels its date as the latest dataset review.
• Role compare: the sources card now covers the pay scales for every sector in the list and shows when the oldest of them was last checked, instead of naming only NHS pay scales with the wrong date.
• Privacy and source pages: the privacy policy now explains the optional email sign-ups and the name and email asked for before a CSV download, the data sources page uses the same Strong, Fair and Limited labels as the calculators, and a garbled changelog entry now reads correctly.
• Download your results: Calculator results now have one simple card to download them as a spreadsheet, with an optional pay award alert, and the timed sign-up pop-up has gone.
• Allowances and sources: council fringe area pay now uses the national rates from 1/4/2026 (£1,079 inner fringe, £753 outer fringe), allowance options show the amount the calculator actually adds, and the source card on armed forces, fire, prison, courts and transport calculators is no longer cut off mid-word.
• Annual leave: fire station, group, area and brigade managers, police superintendents and chief officers, and police community support officers now see the leave set by their own national terms, and police officer leave at 10 and 15 years of service now matches the current rules.
• Higher education pay: lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and research fellow calculators now use the national HE pay spine from 1/8/2025 on typical university grades (a Lecturer now runs from £39,906 to £44,746, down from £47,736 to £61,526), while professor, head of school and dean pay stays illustrative because each university sets it.
• Allowances calculators: doctors and consultants can now add an illustrative enhancements percentage, school support staff are no longer offered teacher-only responsibility (TLR) and special educational needs (SEN) payments, and civil service, council and teacher options no longer show an out-of-date figure next to the amount they add.
• Simpler header on phones: on small screens the header is now a single bar with Search and Menu buttons, so pages start straight away instead of after the full menu.
• Role pages: the employer notes, guide labels, role descriptions and two FAQ answers on role and calculator pages now read as plain sentences instead of using long dashes, with the wording otherwise unchanged.
• Take-home pay: the pension contribution we pre-fill for NHS, ambulance, teaching, university, police and fire roles now matches each scheme's lowest member rate for 2026/27, so the example take-home figures on those pages have changed.
• Judge, police and resident doctor pay: judge calculators now use the published 2026/27 judicial salaries (for example £144,350 for a District Judge), police constable and chief officer pay uses the Home Office's published pay points from 1/9/2025 with sergeant to chief superintendent clearly labelled as estimates, and resident doctor pay now steps up one training year at a time from FY1 to ST8.
• Pension early retirement and lump sum figures: The NHS, Teachers', Civil Service, LGPS and police pension calculators now use each scheme's current published early retirement reductions (including the new LGPS reductions for retirements from 1/8/2026), and trading pension for a lump sum now pays £12 for each £1 of pension at every age, as all five schemes do.
• New homepage layout: the top of the homepage now puts the calculator finder in its own card beside a short introduction, with clearer steps, readable role and calculator names, and links for planning with your own figures.
• Annual leave: council and school support staff now show the national minimum of 25 days (28 after five years) plus bank holidays, and resident doctor, firefighter and armed forces leave now match their official terms.
• Sick pay: teacher sick pay now follows the Burgundy Book in working days (25 days full pay in the first year, rising to 100 days full and 100 days half pay from the fourth year), and Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) answers now say it is paid from the first full day off sick at £123.25 a week (2026/27).
• Maternity pay: the 52-week maternity pay timeline now uses the 2026/27 statutory maternity pay rate of £194.32 a week and adds it to half pay weeks (up to full pay), and council maternity pages now show the NJC Green Book pattern of 6 weeks at 90% then 12 weeks at half pay plus statutory pay.
• Local government pay: calculators now use the agreed NJC 2026/27 pay award, and the lowest council band starts at SCP 3 (£25,614) because SCP 2 was deleted from 1/4/2026.

5/10/2026

• Source links and phone layout: links to official pay, pension and training pages that had moved now point to the current GOV.UK, NHS Employers, Local Government Association and Acas pages, and the contact, changelog, about, privacy and terms pages no longer scroll sideways on small phones.

4/10/2026

• Pension calculators: Teachers' Pension and Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) estimates now use a normal pension age of 67 to match State Pension age, and the breakdown by section is easier to read on a phone.

3/10/2026

• Sign-up box and planning tools: the email sign-up box no longer floats over calculators on phones, now appears below your results with a larger close button, and long dashes are gone from the planning tools and results panels.
• Punctuation tidy on hub pages: The pay and leave framework notes on the NHS, schools and civil service pages, and one line on the home page, now read as plain sentences instead of using long dashes.

2/10/2026

• Dates and loading: dates in calculator and guide text now read the UK way (for example 6/4/2026 to 5/4/2027), leave, sick pay, maternity and CPD calculators no longer download pay tables they do not use, and browsers can now keep unchanged calculator files instead of re-checking them every hour.
• Site redesign: a calmer grey and white look with teal kept for buttons and links, calculator pages split into clear sections for the calculator, your results, the guide and related tools, and a homepage with clearer sections. Charts on calculator pages are larger and easier to read, with round axis figures and the key amounts labelled.

30/9/2026

• New icons: emoji across the site are replaced with one set of simple line icons in the site colours, pension page headings no longer read emoji aloud to screen readers, and police inspector pages now show the police badge.
• Site updates: returning visitors now get the latest calculators and pay data within an hour of a change (a cached copy could previously last a year), old per-role pension addresses now redirect to the pension calculators, and "Last updated" dates on guides, planning tools and policy pages now show when that page's own text last changed.
• Armed Forces pay: calculators now use the official 2026/27 Armed Forces Pay Review Body salary tables, so junior pay no longer dips in year two and every rank shows its published rate.
• Take-home pay: the 45% income tax rate now starts above £125,140, student loan repayments use the 2026/27 thresholds, and the example tables on senior and armed forces pages now show the correct take-home figures.

10/9/2026

• NHS salaried GP and dentist pay: Salaried GP calculators now load the 2026/27 salaried GP range correctly, and a Salaried Dentist option that wrongly used Agenda for Change bands has been removed.

Earlier updates

• Part-time journey: take-home (Step 4) now carries over payslip gross, FTE-adjusted pay, band and years from earlier steps
• Pay datasets refreshed: Civil Service (2026/27 remit, EO top spine £32,137), NJC (+3.3%), schools STPCD (+3.5% from 1/9/2026); static examples aligned to calculator defaults
• Custom gross pay: part-time, reduced hours, allowances and career breaks calculators now let you enter your payslip gross (or use band + years in band) so comparisons match your actual pay point
• Fuller pages: FAQs in the page itself, role-tailored calculator guides, static examples, maternity summaries, enriched About/Sources/Contact/Privacy/Terms, planning tools hub, role landings and guides hub
• Trust pages refresh: About, Sources, Contact, Privacy and Terms restyled with hero headers and panel layout; contact email unified to ryan@publicsectorcalculators.co.uk
• Footer: planning tools column lists each tool individually plus the planning tools hub
• Planning tools polish: part-time journey and sector allowances guide expanded; FAQs use accessible expandable sections across all planning tools
• Role pages and guides: enriched org/role landing pages (sector context, how pay works, mini FAQs); editorial guides hub with 12 cornerstone articles
• Priority tools: 52-week maternity pay timeline, notice and redundancy calculator, HCAS and TLR allowances guide
• Part-time planning journey: expanded to four steps (work patterns, allowances, annual leave, take-home) with clearer UK English copy
• Polish: source and confidence panels on career, work patterns, allowances and career breaks; contact link on every result
• More role scenarios: Paramedic, midwife, teaching assistant and others
• Navigation: Grouped menus, About, Contact, Planning tools
• Leave, sick pay and maternity: “At a glance” summaries and sources panels on leave, sick pay and maternity calculators (every role that has these calculators)
• Continue planning: Links on results save band/years/FTE and open the next calculator for the same role
• Advanced take-home: Student loan plan, tax code (1257L/BR/D0/NT) and salary sacrifice
• Pay award calculator: pay award and back pay tool
• Scenario prefill (band, years, FTE saved in browser between calculators on the same role)
• Uniform hub layout: find your role, calculator list, guide, related tools
• Google Analytics now counts calculator starts, results, assumption panel opens and clicks on related calculators and Continue planning (no salary figures)
• Added data sources and changelog pages
• Result-level source and confidence panel on pay and take-home calculators

Dataset review