NHS starting salary

mrkds

I know this is an old post and probably not relevant to the OP anymore, but I was in similar position and wanted to share my experience. 

I recently went through the process of  requesting a higher-than-bottom-of-the-payscale salary for a new technical position in the NHS. It was a rather beurocratic process where my would-be manager had to to submit  a form with evidence that I was worth the higher salary to HR. In my case, I had a decent record of publications that I could cite and I had qualifications that were higher than were listed in the person spec. Another thing that worked my favour is this was a specialist role of which there was no other of its type at this particular Trust. For more conventional mainstream roles, I'd say the chances of success are less likely.

The whole process took about 4 weeks and I was successful.  What I was offered was still lower than my previous salary but much less of a drop. Combined with the generous pension, holiday and sick pay, this was a result I was happy with.

My advice to anyone in this position, if you feel you are genuinely an outstanding candidate and can justify with concrete evidence why you are worth more than the bottom of the salary band, approach your would-be manager and ask them to discuss this with HR. The worst that can happen is they disagree and cause you some embarrassment. Just be aware there is no guarantee of success as the final decision is down to HR, who are probably less knowledgable about your specific merits than your manager.