Community Staff Nurse Salary 2026/27: Band 5 Pay Explained

Last updated: 30 October 2026 · Figures verified against the NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular.

By the NHS Bands Pay editorial team

Community nursing is the part of the NHS most people never see. No ward, no uniform corridor, no nurses station. A community staff nurse starts the day at a community base, picks up a list of home visits, and spends the shift in patients living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms: dressings changed at a kitchen table, injections given in a hallway, end-of-life care delivered where the patient wants to die. The work is lone, mobile and practical, and the pay reflects all three. This page sets out the Band 5 salary in full, then adds the pieces that actually move a community nurse's payslip: unsocial hours, overtime, mileage and London weighting.

One point needs stating plainly before the numbers. A community staff nurse and a hospital staff nurse are paid identically. Agenda for Change has no community premium and no hospital premium. Both sit at Band 5, both move through the same three steps, and both get the same unsocial-hours percentages. The difference is how the job is done, not what the band pays. Where community pay does diverge is in the extras: a hospital nurse walks to the next bed, while a community nurse drives to the next patient, and that driving is paid for mile by mile.

Community staff nurse pay 2026/27: the Band 5 scale

England awarded Agenda for Change staff 3.3% from 1 April 2026, and the award was paid on time in April salaries. The Band 5 scale below is the 2026/27 England scale for a full-time 37.5-hour week. Hourly rates are annual pay divided by 52.2 weeks and then by 37.5 hours, which is the standard Agenda for Change conversion. Monthly pay is annual pay divided by 12.

The chart above plots the annual figure at each step. The step structure matters for new starters. A newly qualified nurse joining a community team starts at entry, on £32,073, and moves to the intermediate step and then the top through the normal Agenda for Change progression, which is tied to appraisal and time in post rather than to changing jobs. The full journey from entry to top is worth £6,970 a year, or £580.83 a month, before any enhancements. For the wider Band 5 picture, including the roles that share this scale, see the Band 5 salary guide.

Progression is not instant, and it is worth being honest about the pace. Band 5 has three steps, and reaching the top takes several years of satisfactory appraisals. A community nurse who stays at Band 5 and does the same visits year after year will still see pay rise through the steps, but the rises stop at £39,043. After that, the only route to a higher basic is a Band 6 post, which is where the district nurse comparison in the progression section below comes in.

What a community staff nurse actually does

The job title covers a wide visiting list, and the list explains why the pay extras matter so much. A typical community staff nurse caseload includes wound care and leg ulcer management, pressure-area care, catheter and continence care, injections including insulin and vitamin B12, palliative and end-of-life nursing at home, and support for patients recently discharged from hospital who still need nursing input. Some visits take ten minutes. Others, such as a complex dressing or a dying patient, take an hour or more. The nurse plans the route, manages the time, and works alone in the patient's home for most of the shift.

Lone working is the defining feature. There is no ward team a few steps away. A community nurse assesses a patient, decides what is needed, and either does it or escalates it, often by phone to the district nurse or the GP. That autonomy is part of the appeal for nurses who move from wards into the community, and it is also why community experience counts so heavily when Band 6 district nurse posts come up. The nurse who can run a visiting list, manage a caseload day, and handle the unexpected in someone's home is the nurse a district nurse team wants to promote.

The base matters too. Community nurses work from health centres, clinics or community hospitals rather than acute wards, and they return between visits to write notes, restock bags and hand over. The visiting bag itself is a small clinic on a shoulder: dressings, syringes, catheters, gloves, a blood pressure cuff and the paperwork. Trusts supply the bag and the stock; the nurse supplies the car, and the car is where mileage enters the pay story.

Unsocial hours: weekends and evenings on a community rota

Community nursing does not stop at weekends. Patients need dressings on Saturdays, palliative patients need visits on Sundays, and evening visiting runs are part of many community rotas. Agenda for Change Section 2 pays for those hours. For Bands 4 to 9, which includes Band 5, the enhancements are time plus 30% for Saturday and weekday night hours (8pm to 6am) and time plus 60% for Sunday and public-holiday hours. Unsocial hours are counted as any time worked in those windows, not as whole shifts, so a Saturday morning visiting list earns the enhancement for exactly the hours worked.

Take a concrete example. A Band 5 community nurse at the top of the band works a Saturday visiting list of 7.5 hours. At £25.94 an hour, that shift pays £194.55, against £149.63 for the same hours on a weekday. The same nurse working a Sunday list of 7.5 hours at £31.92 an hour earns £239.40. Over a year, a nurse who regularly works one weekend day a week will see several thousand pounds of enhancement on top of basic pay, which is why two community nurses on the same step can take home noticeably different amounts. The unsocial hours and overtime guide works through the full Section 2 rules, including the different percentages that apply at Bands 2 and 3.

Overtime: time and a half, double on bank holidays

Overtime in Agenda for Change means hours above 37.5 a week. Part-time community nurses are paid at plain time, plus any unsocial enhancement that applies, for hours above their contracted hours up to 37.5; the overtime rates only bite above 37.5. For Bands 1 to 7, overtime is paid at time and a half, and at double time on bank and public holidays. Bands 8 and 9 get time off in lieu instead of overtime pay, which does not affect Band 5 staff. Overtime and unsocial-hours enhancement cannot both be claimed for the same hours, so a nurse picks the better of the two for any given hour, and some staff elect time off in lieu instead of pay.

Community overtime usually comes from visits overrunning or from covering a colleague's list, rather than from extra shifts in the hospital sense. A nurse at the top of Band 5 who works two overtime hours in a normal week earns £59.86 for those hours, against £39.90 at plain time. The same two hours on a bank holiday earn £79.80. Small amounts, but they add up across a year of late finishes, and they are the reason community nurses should check that overtime is recorded accurately: an overrun visit is still an hour worked.

Mileage: the payment that only community staff get in bulk

Mileage is where community pay genuinely differs from ward pay. A hospital nurse may claim a few miles a year. A community nurse can drive thousands. Agenda for Change Section 17 pays car users 59p a mile for the first 4,500 miles in a year and 36p a mile after that. Motorcycle users receive 30p a mile, cyclists 20p a mile, and carrying a passenger on NHS business adds 5p a mile. There is also a reserve rate of 30p a mile and a bulky-equipment addition of 3p a mile for staff who regularly carry heavy kit, though the standard car rate covers most community visiting.

Work through the middle example, because it is the most common pattern. A nurse driving 6,000 business miles in a year is paid 59p for the first 4,500 miles, which is £2,655, and 36p for the remaining 1,500 miles, which is £540, for a total of £3,195. A nurse covering a rural patch can easily pass 10,000 miles, where the total reaches £4,635. Two warnings belong here. First, mileage is an expense reimbursement for running a car, not extra pay, and it is taxed differently from salary, so it should never be added to a salary figure as if it were earnings. Second, the 59p rate drops to 36p after 4,500 miles, so the second half of a heavy driving year pays less per mile than the first. Keep a mileage log and claim promptly: trusts process mileage monthly, and unclaimed miles are money left behind. The NHS mileage rates guide covers every vehicle type, the reserve rate and the HMRC comparison in full.

Lease cars deserve a mention, because many community trusts offer them. A lease car scheme usually replaces mileage claims with a fixed monthly deduction and a fuel arrangement, which changes the maths completely. A nurse on a lease scheme should compare the deduction against the mileage total above before signing, because a low-mileage nurse can lose money on a lease while a high-mileage nurse can gain. The choice is personal and trust-specific, so this page quotes no lease figure: ask your trust for its own worked example.

London weighting: HCAS for community nurses

The High Cost Area Supplement applies to community nurses exactly as it does to hospital nurses: it is a percentage of basic pay, with a minimum and a maximum in each zone. Inner London pays 20% of basic (minimum £5,794, maximum £8,746), outer London 15% (minimum £4,870, maximum £6,137) and the fringe zone 5% (minimum £1,346, maximum £2,270). Where the percentage falls below the minimum, the minimum is paid instead, which is what happens to a Band 5 entry nurse in outer London: 15% of £32,073 is £4,810.95, below the £4,870 minimum, so the nurse receives £4,870 and a total of £36,943.

London community nursing has one extra wrinkle worth noting. Community nurses in London still drive between visits, and London mileage is claimed on the same Section 17 rates, but the distances are shorter and the traffic slower, so the mileage total is usually lower than in a rural patch while the supplement is much higher. The balance between the two is part of why London community posts attract nurses who want the supplement without the rural driving load. The London weighting guide carries the full zone tables and the boundary notes.

Pension: what comes off a community nurse's pay

NHS pension contributions for 2026/27 use provisional tiers calculated from the published 2025/26 thresholds. A Band 5 nurse at entry (£32,073) or at the intermediate step (£34,592) falls in the 8.3% tier, which covers pensionable pay from £28,855 to £35,155. A nurse at the top of Band 5 (£39,043) falls in the 9.8% tier, which covers £35,156 to £52,778. The monthly deductions are £221.84 at entry, £239.26 at the intermediate step and £318.85 at the top. The employer adds 23.7% on top: £7,601.30 a year at entry and £9,253.19 a year at the top, which is deferred pay in the truest sense, since it funds the pension the nurse will draw later.

Two pension points are specific to community staff. First, part-time nurses contribute on their actual pensionable pay, not on the full-time equivalent, so a 0.6 whole-time equivalent nurse at entry contributes 8.3% of £19,243.80, which is £133.10 a month, not 8.3% of £32,073. Second, pensionable pay includes unsocial-hours enhancements and overtime in the NHS scheme, so a community nurse with heavy weekend working accrues pension on a higher figure than the basic alone. The NHS pension contributions guide carries the full tier table and the part-time worked examples.

Part-time community nursing: the pro rata maths

Community nursing suits part-time working, and many community teams are built around it. Part-time pay is the full-time salary multiplied by the whole-time equivalent fraction. A 0.6 post at Band 5 entry pays £19,243.80 a year, or £1,603.65 a month. A 0.8 post at the top of Band 5 pays £31,234.40 a year, or £2,602.87 a month. Unsocial-hours percentages apply to the same hourly rates as full-time staff, because the hourly rate does not change with the fraction, and mileage is claimed on the same per-mile rates regardless of contracted hours. Annual leave is also pro rata, which is covered in the leave section below. The part-time pay guide works through term-time and compressed-hours variants for staff whose pattern is not a simple fraction.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Pay is devolved, so a community nurse's salary depends on the nation as well as the band. Scotland awarded 3.75% from 1 April 2026 and moved to a 36-hour full-time week. Its Band 5 scale runs from £34,494 at entry to £42,977 at the top, which works out at £18.36 an hour at entry and £22.87 at the top on the shorter week. Wales awarded 3.3% and paid it on time, with a Band 5 scale of £32,557 at entry, £35,114 at the intermediate step and £39,631 at the top. That puts Wales £484 a year ahead of England at entry, £522 ahead at the intermediate step and £588 ahead at the top, or £40.33, £43.50 and £49.00 a month. Northern Ireland has a 3.3% recommendation for 2026/27 that had not been implemented as of late August 2026, so this page quotes no Northern Ireland figure: staff there should not budget on the uplift until implementation is confirmed. The pay scales by country guide compares all four nations side by side, and the Scotland pay guide and Wales pay guide carry the national detail.

Annual leave, uniform relief and the smaller extras

Annual leave under Agenda for Change Section 13 in England is 27 days plus 8 bank holidays for staff with up to 4 years of service, 29 days plus 8 for 5 or more years, and 33 days plus 8 for 10 or more years. Part-time community nurses receive the same entitlement pro rata. A nurse working 0.6 whole-time equivalent with 5 years of service receives 60% of 37 days, which is 22.2 days. Leave is counted in hours for staff on varied shifts, and community nurses should check whether their trust counts leave in days or hours, because the two methods give different answers for part-time rotas. The annual leave guide covers the hours conversion and the mid-year starter rules.

Uniform tax relief is a small but reliable extra. Nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants, therapists, radiographers, physiotherapists and dental nurses can claim a flat-rate expense of £125 a year for laundering a uniform, which is worth £25 a year in tax relief at the basic rate and £50 at the higher rate. It is claimed through a tax code change rather than through payroll, so it never appears on a payslip, but it is real money for a community nurse who washes a uniform at home. The tax code guide explains how to claim it.

The honest picture: what community pay does and does not do

Community staff nurse pay is solid, transparent and nationally set, which is its strength. A nurse can look up the Band 5 scale, add the unsocial-hours percentage for the rota, add mileage for the patch, and know the gross figure within a few pounds. There are no hidden bonuses and no negotiation over the basic: the scale is the scale. The weakness is the ceiling. Band 5 tops out at £39,043, and a nurse who wants more must move to Band 6, which means a district nurse post, a health visitor qualification, or a specialist role. Community nursing also carries costs that ward nursing does not: running a car, lone working, and the wear of driving between visits in all weathers. Mileage covers the car, but it does not cover the tiredness, and any nurse weighing a move into the community should visit with a team first and drive a patch before deciding. The pay is fair for the band. The job is the reason to take it, not the salary.

Frequently asked questions

What band is a community staff nurse?

Band 5. A community staff nurse is a registered nurse working in patients homes and community clinics, paid on the Agenda for Change Band 5 scale: £32,073 at entry, £34,592 at the intermediate step and £39,043 at the top in England in 2026/27. The band is the same as a newly qualified hospital nurse, because the pay follows the band, not the building. What differs is the working pattern: community nurses travel between visits, work from a community base rather than a ward, and take their caseload direction from a Band 6 district nurse.

How much does a community staff nurse earn a month?

In England in 2026/27, £2,672.75 a month at Band 5 entry, £2,882.67 at the intermediate step and £3,253.58 at the top, before tax, National Insurance and pension deductions and before any unsocial-hours enhancement or London weighting. Those are gross figures for a full-time 37.5-hour week. Part-time pay is pro rata: a 0.6 whole-time equivalent post at entry pays £19,243.80 a year, or £1,603.65 a month.

What is the difference between a community staff nurse and a district nurse?

The district nurse holds the caseload and sits at Band 6, while the community staff nurse delivers the visits within that caseload at Band 5. The district nurse assesses patients, plans care, leads the team and carries clinical accountability for the caseload. The staff nurse carries out the planned visits: dressings, injections, catheter care, end-of-life support and the day-to-day nursing that keeps people at home. The pay gap reflects that difference: Band 5 tops out at £39,043, and Band 6 starts at £39,959, a step of £916, before any unsocial-hours or London additions.

Do community nurses get paid mileage?

Yes, under Agenda for Change Section 17. A car user is paid 59p a mile for the first 4,500 miles in a year and 36p a mile after that. A nurse driving 6,000 miles in a year receives £3,195: £2,655 for the first 4,500 miles plus £540 for the remaining 1,500. A nurse driving 4,000 miles receives £2,360. Motorcycle users receive 30p a mile, cyclists 20p a mile, and a passenger carried on NHS business adds 5p a mile. Mileage is an expense reimbursement, not pay, so it is kept separate from salary in every example on this page.

Do community nurses get unsocial-hours pay?

Yes, when the hours are worked. Agenda for Change Section 2 pays Band 5 staff time plus 30% for Saturday and weekday night hours (8pm to 6am) and time plus 60% for Sunday and public-holiday hours. At Band 5 entry, £16.38 an hour becomes £21.29 on a Saturday or at night and £26.21 on a Sunday or bank holiday. At the top of the band, £19.95 an hour becomes £25.94 and £31.92. Community rotas vary by trust, so the unsocial-hours share of a real payslip depends on how much weekend and evening visiting the local rota requires.

How much is London weighting for a community nurse?

The High Cost Area Supplement is 20% of basic pay in inner London (minimum £5,794, maximum £8,746), 15% in outer London (minimum £4,870, maximum £6,137) and 5% in the fringe zone (minimum £1,346, maximum £2,270). A Band 5 community nurse at entry in inner London receives £6,414.60 on top of the £32,073 basic, for a total of £38,487.60. The same nurse in outer London receives the £4,870 minimum, for a total of £36,943, because 15% of £32,073 is £4,810.95, below the minimum. At the top of Band 5, inner London weighting is £7,808.60, for a total of £46,851.60.

How does community nurse pay differ in Scotland and Wales?

Scotland pays Band 5 £34,494 at entry and £42,977 at the top in 2026/27, on a 36-hour week, which works out at £18.36 an hour at entry and £22.87 at the top. Wales pays £32,557 at entry, £35,114 at the intermediate step and £39,631 at the top, which is £484, £522 and £588 a year ahead of England at each step, or £40.33, £43.50 and £49.00 a month. Northern Ireland has a 3.3% recommendation for 2026/27 that had not been implemented as of late August 2026, so no 2026/27 Northern Ireland figure is quoted here.

How do I progress from community staff nurse to district nurse?

By appointment to a Band 6 post, which is not automatic with service. The usual route is to build community experience at Band 5, then apply for a district nurse post or a specialist practitioner training post, which combines the district nursing qualification with Band 6 pay once qualified. The financial step is clear: Band 6 starts at £39,959, which is £916 above the Band 5 top of £39,043, and Band 6 tops out at £48,117. Check the exact training route with your trust, because funding and course arrangements are agreed locally.

Source: NHS Employers unsocial hours payments. Pay figures: NHS Employers Agenda for Change pay circular 2026/27.