Consultant Midwife Salary 2026/27: Band 8a-8b
Last updated: 1 November 2026 · Figures verified against the NHS Employers 2026/27 pay circular.
Consultant midwife pay 2026/27: the Band 8a and Band 8b scales
England awarded Agenda for Change staff 3.3% from 1 April 2026, and that award is already in these figures. A consultant midwife in England in 2026/27 earns £57,528 to £64,750 at Band 8a and £66,582 to £77,368 at Band 8b, for a full-time 37.5-hour week. The step from the top of Band 7 (£56,515) to Band 8a entry is only £1,013, and the step from the top of Band 8a to Band 8b entry is £1,832, so promotion at this level pays off across the following years rather than on day one. The spread inside each band is wider than the gap between bands: £7,222 inside Band 8a and £10,786 inside Band 8b. For the wider picture at each band, see the Band 8a salary guide and the Band 8b salary guide, and for the ladder that leads here, see our midwife salary guide.
The 2026/27 England scales for a full-time 37.5-hour week. Hourly rates are annual pay divided by 52.2 weeks and then by 37.5 hours, rounded to the nearest penny, and enhancement rates on this page are calculated from that rounded hourly rate. Monthly pay is annual pay divided by 12. Weekly pay is annual pay divided by 52.2.
| Band and step | Annual | Monthly | Weekly | Hourly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Band 8a entry | £57,528 | £4,794.00 | £1,102.07 | £29.39 |
| Band 8a intermediate | £60,417 | £5,034.75 | £1,157.41 | £30.86 |
| Band 8a top | £64,750 | £5,395.83 | £1,240.42 | £33.08 |
| Band 8b entry | £66,582 | £5,548.50 | £1,275.52 | £34.01 |
| Band 8b intermediate | £70,896 | £5,908.00 | £1,358.16 | £36.22 |
| Band 8b top | £77,368 | £6,447.33 | £1,482.15 | £39.52 |
For comparison, the 2025/26 ranges before the 3.3% award were £55,690 to £62,682 at Band 8a and £64,455 to £74,896 at Band 8b. The award lifted every step, and no back pay was due in England because the increase was paid on time in April salaries.
What a consultant midwife actually does
A consultant midwife is the most senior clinical midwife in a service, and the job is built around expert practice rather than management. The consultant midwife carries the most complex cases: women with medical conditions in pregnancy, complex birth plans, previous traumatic births, and pregnancies where the clinical picture does not fit a standard pathway. Where a Band 6 or Band 7 midwife would escalate, the consultant midwife is often the person the case is escalated to, and the advice given in that moment is the core of the job.
Beyond the caseload, the post has three further strands. The first is leadership of practice: setting clinical standards for the service, writing and updating guidelines, and leading the response when audit or incident review shows a pathway needs to change. The second is education: teaching and mentoring midwives across the service, running training on complex care, and supporting newly qualified midwives and students through the cases that stretch them. The third is research and service development: leading audit, turning evidence into local practice, and shaping new pathways, for example for women with specific medical conditions or for continuity-of-carer models. Expert clinical practice is the largest share of the working week, with the other strands built around it rather than replacing it.
That shape is what separates the consultant midwife from the matron. The matron, covered in our matron salary guide, runs wards and departments, holds the rota, and answers for staffing, patient flow and day-to-day performance. The consultant midwife answers for clinical quality: whether the complex cases are handled well, whether guidelines reflect current evidence, and whether midwives across the service have the skills and support to handle the hard cases. A large maternity service needs both, and the two roles work side by side, but they are different jobs, and a midwife choosing between them is choosing between a management career and a clinical-expert career. The nursing equivalent, covered in our consultant nurse salary guide, follows the same pattern at the same bands.
Band 8a versus Band 8b: what actually changes
At Band 8a, the consultant midwife leads expert practice in a defined area of the service: a specialist clinic, a pathway for complex pregnancies, or a particular model of care. The nurse holds the complex caseload in that area, sets its standards, and teaches and supports the midwives who work in it. At Band 8b, the scope widens: the consultant midwife leads practice across a larger service or across more than one site, carries strategic responsibility for an area of care, and works at trust level on service development and cross-site standards. Band 8b also brings more exposure to trust-wide governance, including leading the midwifery response to serious incident review and to external scrutiny of the service.
The pay difference at the point of promotion is £1,832 from the top of Band 8a to Band 8b entry, but the wider spread inside Band 8b (£10,786 from entry to top, against £7,222 inside Band 8a) means the grade rewards staying and progressing within it. There are far fewer Band 8b consultant midwife posts than Band 8a posts, so reaching Band 8b usually means winning a post with a wider remit rather than simply serving time at Band 8a. For the full band pictures, see the Band 8a salary guide and the Band 8b salary guide.
Unsocial hours: a mostly weekday role, with on-call kept separate
Section 2 of Agenda for Change pays time plus 30% for Saturdays and weekday nights (8pm to 6am) and time plus 60% for Sundays and bank holidays, for Bands 4 to 9. Consultant midwifery is mostly weekday work: clinics, case review, teaching, guideline and audit work, and service development. Where a consultant midwife works a Saturday clinic or covers a weekend service, the hours actually worked in the unsocial windows attract the enhancements in the table on this page. An 8-hour Saturday clinic at Band 8a entry pays £305.68 at the enhanced rate, against £235.12 at plain time, using the rounded hourly rates in the table.
| Band and step | Plain hourly | Sat and weekday nights (+30%) | Sun and bank holidays (+60%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Band 8a entry | £29.39 | £38.21 | £47.02 |
| Band 8a intermediate | £30.86 | £40.12 | £49.38 |
| Band 8a top | £33.08 | £43.00 | £52.93 |
| Band 8b entry | £34.01 | £44.21 | £54.42 |
| Band 8b intermediate | £36.22 | £47.09 | £57.95 |
| Band 8b top | £39.52 | £51.38 | £63.23 |
On-call is a separate question from unsocial hours, and it is set locally rather than by a national rate, so this page quotes no on-call figure. Some consultant midwife posts carry an on-call element for complex cases, and some do not. Ask whether the post carries on-call, how often, and how it is paid or taken as time off, because two consultant midwife posts at the same band can differ on this point. For the full enhancement rules, see our unsocial hours and overtime guide.
Overtime at Bands 8a and 8b: TOIL only, and why it matters
Under Agenda for Change Section 3, Bands 8 and 9 receive no contractual overtime pay. Extra hours above 37.5 a week are taken as time off in lieu only. Staff may not claim time and a half, and there is no double-time rate at these bands, on bank holidays or otherwise. That is the sharpest pay-rule change on the road from Band 7 to Band 8a, because Band 7 overtime above 37.5 hours is paid at time and a half, and double time on bank holidays.
The practical effect depends on how the service handles TOIL. In a service where TOIL is recorded and taken promptly, the loss against Band 7 overtime pay is partly a timing difference: hours banked and taken back as leave. In a service where TOIL builds up and is hard to take, the loss is real, because extra hours worked are never repaid in cash or in time. Before accepting a Band 8a consultant midwife post, ask how TOIL is recorded, whether there is a cap on banked hours, and how often consultants in the service actually take their TOIL. The answer tells you more about the real value of the post than the headline salary alone. Enhancement and overtime cannot both be claimed for the same hours, and the TOIL rule does not change the unsocial-hours enhancements for hours actually worked in the unsocial windows.
Mileage, part-time work, leave and uniform relief
Some consultant midwife work involves travel, for example to clinics on another site or to community services, and that travel is claimable under Agenda for Change Section 17. The 2026/27 car rates are 59p a mile for the first 4,500 business miles in the mileage year and 36p a mile above that, with 30p for motorcycles, 20p for pedal cycles and 5p for passengers. A consultant midwife who drives 5,500 business miles in a year claims 4,500 miles at 59p (£2,655) plus 1,000 miles at 36p (£360), a total of £3,015. Travel between home and the normal place of work is not claimable. For the full rates, see our mileage rates guide.
Part-time consultant midwife work is pro rata of the full-time equivalent salary. A 0.8 WTE consultant midwife at Band 8a entry earns 80% of £57,528, which is £46,022.40 a year, and a 0.6 WTE consultant midwife at the top of Band 8b earns 60% of £77,368, which is £46,420.80 a year, before any enhancements. Part-time staff accrue annual leave pro rata, and hours above contracted hours up to 37.5 are paid at plain time plus any unsocial enhancement that applies; only above 37.5 does the TOIL rule bite. For the leave rules in full, see our annual leave guide and our part-time pay guide.
Annual leave in England follows the Agenda for Change tiers: 27 days plus 8 bank holidays for up to 4 years of service, 29 plus 8 from 5 years, and 33 plus 8 from 10 years. Uniform tax relief is a small but real extra: midwives can claim HMRC flat-rate expenses of £125 a year for laundering a uniform where the employer provides no laundry service or allowance, worth £25 a year at the basic tax rate and £50 at the higher rate, backdatable up to 4 tax years on form P87.
London weighting: every zone capped at these bands
Consultant midwives in London trusts receive the High Cost Area Supplement on top of basic pay: 20% of basic 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). At Bands 8a and 8b, the percentage figure exceeds the maximum in every zone at every step, so the supplement is the cap figure in each zone: £8,746 inner, £6,137 outer and £2,270 fringe, whatever the step. That makes the London maths simple: add the cap to the basic salary. A consultant midwife at the top of Band 8b in inner London earns £77,368 + £8,746 = £86,114 a year, and a consultant midwife at Band 8a entry in the fringe zone earns £57,528 + £2,270 = £59,798 a year. For the full zone rules, see our London weighting guide.
| Post | Basic | Inner London total | Outer London total | Fringe total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Band 8a entry | £57,528 | £66,274 | £63,665 | £59,798 |
| Band 8a top | £64,750 | £73,496 | £70,887 | £67,020 |
| Band 8b entry | £66,582 | £75,328 | £72,719 | £68,852 |
| Band 8b top | £77,368 | £86,114 | £83,505 | £79,638 |
Pension: what comes off the payslip
Consultant midwives are in the NHS Pension Scheme, and the member contribution is the largest regular deduction after tax. On the provisional 2026/27 England and Wales tiers, every Band 8a step and Band 8b entry sit in the 10.7% tier: £6,155.50 a year or £512.96 a month at Band 8a entry, £6,464.62 a year or £538.72 a month at Band 8a intermediate, £6,928.25 a year or £577.35 a month at the top of Band 8a, and £7,124.27 a year or £593.69 a month at Band 8b entry. Band 8b intermediate and top sit in the 12.5% tier: £8,862.00 a year or £738.50 a month on £70,896, and £9,671.00 a year or £805.92 a month on £77,368. The employer contributes 23.7% on top, which is £13,634.14 a year at Band 8a entry and £18,336.22 a year at the top of Band 8b. The 2026/27 tiers are provisional, calculated from the published 2025/26 tiers, so treat the tier boundaries as subject to confirmation. For the full tier table, see our pension contributions guide.
Pay progression
From consultant midwifery, the next steps are senior Band 8b posts with a wider remit, director-level midwifery leadership, or a move into the management line through the matron route, covered in our matron salary guide. The ladder that leads here is covered in our midwife salary guide (Band 5 to 7), and the nursing equivalent at the same bands is covered in our consultant nurse salary guide. Band 8b consultant midwife posts pay £66,582 to £77,368.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Scotland has its own Agenda for Change scale and a 36-hour week from April 2026, after a 3.75% award from 1 April 2026. The Scotland Band 5 range is £34,494 to £42,977, which works out at £18.36 to £22.87 an hour on the 36-hour week. Scotland Band 8a and Band 8b steps are not quoted here because the full Scotland scales for those bands are not in the verified data file, and this page does not guess at them. Wales awarded 3.3% from 1 April 2026, and the Wales Band 5 steps are £32,557, £35,114 and £39,631, slightly above the England steps at entry and intermediate. Northern Ireland is different: the 3.3% award was recommended but had not been implemented at the time of writing, so Northern Ireland consultant midwives should not budget on the new rates until implementation is confirmed. For the nation guides, see NHS Scotland pay, NHS Wales pay and NHS Northern Ireland pay.
The honest picture: what consultant midwife pay does and does not do
Consultant midwife pay in 2026/27 is solid, nationally set, and transparent: anyone can look up the band, find the step, and know the basic salary to the penny. It does not pay a premium for the specialty itself. There is no consultant-midwife supplement in the national scale, and the unsocial-hours additions are smaller here than in ward or on-call specialties because most of the work falls in weekday hours. What varies is the pattern: a London consultant midwife with HCAS at the cap, a consultant midwife with regular Saturday clinics, and a consultant midwife in a weekday-only service can sit at the same band and take home different amounts. The other variable is TOIL: at Bands 8a and 8b, extra hours are repaid in time, not cash, so the real value of a post depends on whether that time can actually be taken. When comparing consultant midwife posts, confirm the HCAS zone, ask about Saturday and on-call cover, and ask how TOIL is recorded and taken. Those answers tell you more about the real pay of a post than the band alone ever will.
Frequently asked questions
What band is a consultant midwife in the NHS?
In England in 2026/27, a consultant midwife sits at Band 8a or Band 8b on Agenda for Change. Band 8a pays £57,528 at entry, £60,417 at the intermediate step and £64,750 at the top, and Band 8b pays £66,582 at entry, £70,896 at the intermediate step and £77,368 at the top, for a full-time 37.5-hour week. Band 8a is the usual entry grade for a consultant midwife post, and Band 8b is the senior grade, held by consultant midwives leading a large service or working across more than one site.
How much does a consultant midwife earn a month?
In England in 2026/27, a consultant midwife at Band 8a earns £4,794.00 a month at entry, £5,034.75 at the intermediate step and £5,395.83 at the top, before tax, National Insurance and pension deductions. At Band 8b the monthly figures are £5,548.50 at entry, £5,908.00 at the intermediate step and £6,447.33 at the top. Those are gross figures for a full-time 37.5-hour week, before any unsocial-hours enhancement or London weighting, and before the pension deduction explained on this page.
Is a consultant midwife the same as a matron?
No, although both roles sit at senior bands and both carry influence across a maternity service. A matron is a management role: running wards and departments, holding the staffing rota, handling performance and patient-flow problems, and answering for the service day to day. A consultant midwife is a clinical expert role: carrying the most complex cases, setting clinical standards, leading practice development, teaching and supporting other midwives, and leading audit and service improvement. The two roles work side by side, and a large maternity service needs both, but they are different jobs with different job descriptions. Our matron salary guide covers the management grade, and our modern matron salary guide covers the ward-based leadership grade.
Is a consultant midwife the same as a consultant obstetrician?
No. A consultant midwife is a midwife, employed on Agenda for Change at Band 8a or 8b, and the figures on this page are Agenda for Change figures. A consultant obstetrician is a doctor, employed on the medical consultant contract, which sits outside Agenda for Change entirely and pays on a different scale. The two work closely together in the same maternity service, and a consultant midwife may lead the midwifery side of a pathway while the consultant obstetrician leads the medical side, but their pay, contracts and professional regulation are different. Do not compare the two scales directly: they are set by different pay bodies under different contracts.
Do consultant midwives get overtime pay?
No. Under Agenda for Change Section 3, Bands 8 and 9 receive no contractual overtime pay: extra hours are taken as time off in lieu (TOIL) only. That is a real change from Band 7, where overtime above 37.5 hours a week is paid at time and a half, and double time on bank holidays. A midwife moving from Band 7 to a Band 8a consultant post should price that change in: hours that used to be paid at time and a half become TOIL, which is valuable only if the service lets you take it. Ask how TOIL is recorded and taken in practice before accepting a Band 8a post, because the contractual position and the local habit can differ.
Do consultant midwives get London weighting?
Yes, where the post is based in a London trust. Consultant midwives receive the High Cost Area Supplement, but at Bands 8a and 8b every zone hits its cap, so the supplement is the same cash figure at every step in each zone: £8,746 in inner London, £6,137 in outer London and £2,270 in the fringe zone. A consultant midwife at the top of Band 8b in inner London earns £77,368 + £8,746 = £86,114 a year. At Band 8a entry in the fringe zone the total is £57,528 + £2,270 = £59,798 a year.
How much pension does a consultant midwife pay?
On the provisional 2026/27 England and Wales tiers, every Band 8a step and Band 8b entry sit in the 10.7% tier: £512.96 a month on £57,528, £538.72 a month on £60,417, £577.35 a month on £64,750 and £593.69 a month on £66,582. Band 8b intermediate and top sit in the 12.5% tier: £738.50 a month on £70,896 and £805.92 a month on £77,368. The employer contributes 23.7% on top, which is £13,634.14 a year at Band 8a entry and £18,336.22 a year at the top of Band 8b. The 2026/27 tiers are provisional, calculated from the published 2025/26 tiers, not yet published as final.
How do you become a consultant midwife?
The usual route runs from a midwife post at Band 5, through Band 6 and Band 7 specialist or lead midwife posts, into a Band 8a consultant midwife post, with Band 8b as the senior grade beyond it. Most consultant midwives arrive with years of practice behind them, including time leading a team or a service area, and postgraduate study alongside clinical work. The post itself is built around four strands: expert clinical practice, leadership, education and research or service development, with expert clinical practice as the largest share. There are far fewer consultant midwife posts than matron posts, so the route depends on a vacancy existing as much as on readiness for it. Our midwife salary guide covers the Band 5 to 7 ladder that leads here, and our consultant nurse salary guide covers the equivalent grade in nursing.