Tissue Viability Nurse Salary 2026/27: Band 6 to Band 7 Pay Explained

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

By the NHS Bands Pay editorial team

Tissue viability is the corner of nursing that deals with skin that has broken down or is at risk of breaking down: pressure damage, leg ulcers, surgical wounds that will not heal, diabetic foot wounds and skin tears. It is slow, detailed work, and it matters far more than its low profile suggests. A wound that heals weeks sooner spares a patient pain and infection, and it frees a hospital bed or a district nursing round. This page sets out the pay in full, from the Band 6 tissue viability nurse running clinics and advising wards to the Band 7 nurse leading the service, with the unsocial hours, overtime, pension and London weighting figures that actually move the payslip.

One point needs stating plainly before the numbers. Tissue viability carries no special pay premium. Agenda for Change has no wound-care supplement, no advisory allowance and no uplift for specialist assessment skills. A Band 6 tissue viability nurse and a Band 6 nurse on any other ward earn the same basic, move through the same three steps, and get the same unsocial-hours percentages. The extra money in tissue viability, where it exists at all, comes from the pattern of the work: a community nurse who visits patients at weekends earns enhancement on those hours, while an advisory nurse who works Monday to Friday in clinics earns none. Anyone choosing between the two kinds of post should weigh the rota as carefully as the basic, because the rota is where the payslips diverge.

Tissue viability nurse pay 2026/27: the Band 6 and Band 7 scales

England awarded Agenda for Change staff 3.3% from 1 April 2026, and the award was paid on time in April salaries. The scales below are 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, which is the standard Agenda for Change conversion. Monthly pay is annual pay divided by 12. For the wider picture at each band, including the roles that share these scales, see the Band 6 salary guide and the Band 7 salary guide.

The chart above plots the annual figure at each step. The step structure matters for anyone planning a move into the specialty. A nurse appointed to a Band 6 tissue viability post starts at £39,959 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 Band 6 entry to Band 6 top is worth £8,158 a year, or £679.83 a month, before any enhancements. The step from Band 6 top to Band 7 entry is £1,270 a year, and the full journey from Band 7 entry to Band 7 top is worth £7,128 a year. Those small gaps are the honest reality of Agenda for Change: the big rises come from changing bands, not from moving steps, and the steps themselves are worth having but will not transform a salary on their own.

Progression is not instant, and it is worth being honest about the pace. Each band has three steps, and reaching the top takes several years of satisfactory appraisals. A tissue viability nurse who stays at Band 6 and runs the same clinics year after year will still see pay rise through the steps, but the rises stop at £48,117. After that, the only route to a higher basic is a Band 7 post, which is where the progression section below comes in.

What a tissue viability nurse actually does

Tissue viability services usually run in two shapes, and the shape decides the working pattern. The advisory model is the hospital version: a small team of specialists who take referrals from wards, assess complex wounds, write care plans, recommend dressings and equipment, and teach ward staff how to prevent pressure damage. The caseload model is the community version: nurses who carry their own list of patients, visit them at home, and manage leg ulcers, pressure damage and post-surgical wounds over weeks and months. Many services blend the two, with the same nurse advising in hospital one day and visiting patients at home the next. The pay is the same across both models at the same band, because the band follows the post, but the working pattern is not: advisory work is mostly weekday work, while community caseloads routinely include weekends.

The daily work is assessment first and dressings second. A tissue viability nurse looks at a wound, works out why it is not healing, and deals with the cause rather than only covering it: pressure that needs relieving, swelling that needs compression, blood supply that needs checking, or a dressing regime that needs changing. That means close working with the teams around the patient. Pressure damage prevention sits with ward and district nursing colleagues, who do the turning, repositioning and skin checks day to day, while the tissue viability nurse sets the standard and steps in for the complex cases. Leg ulcer care sits alongside district nursing, which carries much of the community caseload. Diabetic foot wounds sit alongside diabetes and podiatry services. A tissue viability nurse who understands where their service ends and a neighbouring service begins is doing the job well, because wound care fails when it falls between teams.

Two parts of the job deserve emphasis because they surprise newcomers. The first is prevention. A large share of tissue viability work never touches a wound at all: it is risk assessment, mattress and cushion selection, pressure-area care plans, and training ward staff to spot damage early. Prevention is the cheapest wound care there is, and it is also the hardest to measure, which is why tissue viability nurses spend so much time on audit and education. The second is the pace. Wounds heal slowly, and a tissue viability nurse follows the same patient for months, adjusting the plan as the wound changes. That long view is satisfying work, but it suits nurses who are patient with slow progress and comfortable making clinical judgements with incomplete information.

Becoming a tissue viability nurse: the route in

Tissue viability nursing starts with registration. A nurse qualifies, normally in the adult field, and builds substantial clinical experience in wound care, typically on wards, in district nursing or in a specialist clinic. Services then look for specialist tissue viability study on top of that registration. The exact course, entry requirements and funding are set locally by trusts and universities, so a nurse planning the move should check the detail with the service they want to work in rather than assuming one national route.

One honest point about the study: it helps you get the post, but it does not lift the band on its own. Agenda for Change pays the post, not the certificate. A Band 6 nurse who completes specialist tissue viability study stays on Band 6 until appointed to a Band 7 post. That can feel unfair given the study involved, and it is worth knowing before committing to a course. The return comes through access: lead and service-lead posts go to nurses who hold the specialist knowledge, and the Band 7 figures on this page are the reward for reaching those posts. For the wider specialist ladder, see the clinical nurse specialist salary guide, which covers the Band 7 specialist role across specialties, and the Band 6 salary guide for the band itself.

Unsocial hours: weekends and nights

Advisory tissue viability work is mostly weekday work, so unsocial hours matter less here than in ward or community nursing. Community caseload work is different: patients at home need visiting seven days a week, and weekend visits are a normal part of the rota. Agenda for Change Section 2 pays for those hours. For Bands 4 to 9, which includes Bands 6 and 7, 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 visit that starts at 9am earns the enhancement for the hours worked that day.

Take a concrete example. A Band 6 tissue viability nurse at the top of the band works a Sunday of 7.5 hours on community visits. At £39.33 an hour, that day pays £294.98, against £184.35 for the same hours on a weekday. A Band 6 nurse at entry working a Saturday of 7.5 hours at £26.53 an hour earns £198.98, against £153.08 on a weekday. Over a year, a community tissue viability 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 tissue viability 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 tissue viability 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. 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.

Tissue viability overtime usually comes from clinics overrunning or from urgent referrals that cannot wait until Monday, rather than from extra shifts in the ward sense. A nurse at the top of Band 7 who works two overtime hours in a normal week earns £86.62 for those hours, against £57.74 at plain time. The same two hours on a bank holiday earn £115.48. Small amounts, but they add up across a year of late clinics, and they are the reason tissue viability nurses should check that overtime is recorded accurately: a referral that runs long is still time worked.

London weighting: HCAS for tissue viability nurses

The High Cost Area Supplement applies to tissue viability nurses exactly as it does to other Agenda for Change staff: 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, and where it exceeds the maximum, the maximum caps it, which is what happens at the top of Band 7 in every zone and at the top of Band 6 in outer London and the fringe zone.

Work through the cap, because it catches senior London nurses by surprise. At the top of Band 7, 20% of £56,515 is £11,303, well above the inner London maximum of £8,746, so the nurse receives £8,746 and a total of £65,261. In outer London, 15% of £56,515 is £8,477.25, above the £6,137 maximum, so the nurse receives £6,137 and a total of £62,652. In the fringe zone, 5% of £56,515 is £2,825.75, above the £2,270 maximum, so the nurse receives £2,270 and a total of £58,785. The supplement is generous at Band 6, but it stops growing at Band 7: the cap, not the percentage, sets the figure. The London weighting guide carries the full zone tables and the boundary notes.

Pension: what comes off a tissue viability nurse's pay

NHS pension contributions for 2026/27 use provisional tiers calculated from the published 2025/26 thresholds. All Band 6 tissue viability nurses fall in the 9.8% tier, which covers pensionable pay from £35,156 to £52,778. The monthly deductions are £326.33 at Band 6 entry, £344.39 at the intermediate step and £392.96 at the top. Band 7 nurses at entry and the intermediate step also fall in the 9.8% tier, paying £403.33 and £424.11 a month. A nurse at the top of Band 7 (£56,515) falls in the 10.7% tier, which covers £52,779 to £67,668, and pays £503.93 a month. The employer adds 23.7% on top: £9,470.28 a year at Band 6 entry, £11,403.73 a year at the top of Band 6, and £13,394.06 a year at the top of Band 7, which is deferred pay in the truest sense, since it funds the pension the nurse will draw later.

Two pension points are worth noting for tissue viability 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 Band 6 entry contributes 9.8% of £23,975.40, which is £195.80 a month, not 9.8% of £39,959. Second, pensionable pay includes unsocial-hours enhancements and overtime in the NHS scheme, so a community tissue viability nurse with regular 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 tissue viability nursing: the pro rata maths

Tissue viability services run on clinics and visiting rounds, and part-time working fits them well, which is why many teams are built around part-time nurses. Part-time pay is the full-time salary multiplied by the whole-time equivalent fraction. A 0.6 post at Band 6 entry pays £23,975.40 a year, or £1,997.95 a month. A 0.8 post at the top of Band 7 pays £45,212.00 a year, or £3,767.67 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. 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 tissue viability 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, with its own pay scale. Wales awarded 3.3% and paid it on time, with its own scale that differs slightly from England. This page quotes no Scotland or Wales Band 6 or Band 7 tissue viability figure, because the verified data file holds only the national awards and the Band 5 comparison points: Scotland Band 5 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, and Wales Band 5 runs from £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 tissue viability 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 how their trust counts leave, 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 tissue viability nurse who washes a uniform at home. The tax code guide explains how to claim it.

The honest picture: what tissue viability pay does and does not do

Tissue viability nurse pay is solid, transparent and nationally set, which is its strength. A nurse can look up the band scale, add the unsocial-hours percentage for the rota, 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 6 tops out at £48,117, and a nurse who wants more must move to Band 7, which means leading a service, and beyond that the route narrows to the small number of senior specialist and management posts. Tissue viability also carries demands that other nursing does not: the long, slow work of wounds that refuse to heal, the judgement calls made with incomplete information, and the emotional weight of patients whose wounds will never fully close. The unsocial-hours money compensates for the hours, but it does not compensate for the rest, and any nurse weighing a move into tissue viability should spend time with a service first. The pay is fair for the band. The work is the reason to take it, not the salary.

Frequently asked questions

What band is a tissue viability nurse?

Most tissue viability nurses sit at Band 6, with lead tissue viability nurses and service leads at Band 7. In England in 2026/27, Band 6 pays £39,959 at entry, £42,170 at the intermediate step and £48,117 at the top, and Band 7 pays £49,387 at entry, £51,932 at the intermediate step and £56,515 at the top. The band follows the post: an advisory tissue viability nurse and a caseload nurse in the same trust can sit at different bands, and the job description, not the job title, decides which.

How much does a tissue viability nurse earn a month?

In England in 2026/27, a Band 6 tissue viability nurse earns £3,329.92 a month at entry, £3,514.17 at the intermediate step and £4,009.75 at the top, before tax, National Insurance and pension deductions and before any unsocial-hours enhancement or London weighting. A Band 7 tissue viability nurse earns £4,115.58 to £4,709.58 a month. Those are gross figures for a full-time 37.5-hour week.

Do tissue viability nurses get unsocial-hours pay?

Yes, when the hours are worked. Agenda for Change Section 2 pays Bands 4 to 9 time plus 30% for Saturday and weekday night hours (8pm to 6am) and time plus 60% for Sunday and public-holiday hours. A Band 6 tissue viability nurse at entry earns £26.53 an hour on a Saturday or at night and £32.66 on a Sunday or bank holiday, against £20.41 plain time. At the top of Band 7, £28.87 an hour becomes £37.53 and £46.19. Advisory roles that work standard weekday hours earn little or no enhancement, while community caseload roles with weekend visiting earn more.

Do tissue viability nurses get overtime pay?

Yes, for hours above 37.5 a week. Bands 1 to 7 are paid time and a half for overtime and double time on bank and public holidays. A Band 7 tissue viability nurse at the top of the band earns £43.31 an hour for overtime and £57.74 on a bank holiday, against £28.87 plain time. Part-time 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. Overtime and unsocial-hours enhancement cannot both be claimed for the same hours.

How much is London weighting for a tissue viability 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 6 tissue viability nurse at entry in inner London receives £7,991.80 on top of the £39,959 basic, for a total of £47,950.80. A Band 7 tissue viability nurse at the top in inner London is capped at the £8,746 maximum, for a total of £65,261. Where the percentage falls below the minimum, the minimum is paid instead.

What pension contribution does a tissue viability nurse pay?

Under the provisional 2026/27 tiers, all Band 6 tissue viability nurses pay 9.8% of pensionable pay, which is £326.33 a month at entry, £344.39 at the intermediate step and £392.96 at the top. Band 7 nurses pay 9.8% at entry and the intermediate step (£403.33 and £424.11 a month) and 10.7% at the top (£503.93 a month). The employer adds 23.7% on top, which is £9,470.28 a year at Band 6 entry and £13,394.06 a year at the top of Band 7.

How does tissue viability nurse pay differ in Scotland and Wales?

Scotland awarded 3.75% from 1 April 2026 and moved to a 36-hour full-time week, with its own pay scale. Wales awarded 3.3% and paid it on time, with its own scale that differs slightly from England. This page quotes no Scotland or Wales Band 6 or Band 7 tissue viability figure, because the verified data file holds only the national awards and the Band 5 comparison points: Scotland Band 5 runs from £34,494 at entry to £42,977 at the top, and Wales Band 5 runs from £32,557 at entry to £39,631 at the top. 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.

What training do I need to become a tissue viability nurse?

First, registration as a nurse, normally in the adult field, plus substantial clinical experience in wound care, typically gained on wards, in district nursing or in a specialist clinic. Trusts then look for specialist tissue viability study on top of that registration, and the exact course, entry requirements and funding are set locally by trusts and universities, so check the detail with the service you want to work in. The study itself carries no Agenda for Change pay premium: it helps you get the post, and the post sets the band.

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