Nursing in Practice opens 2026 salary survey for general practice nurses

Nursing in Practice has launched its 2026 salary survey of general practice nurses, one of the few recurring UK data collection efforts focused specifically on pay inside GP surgeries rather than the wider NHS workforce.

The survey's timing matters for anyone working in, or hiring for, primary care nursing. Practice nurse pay sits outside national Agenda for Change banding in many cases, because most general practice nurses are employed directly by GP partnerships rather than by NHS trusts. That structural quirk means aggregated national nursing salary figures routinely miss what practice nurses actually earn, and why a dedicated annual survey carries weight with both jobseekers and practice managers setting pay scales.

For individual nurses, participation-driven data like this serves a concrete function. It gives GPNs a benchmark to take into appraisals, job changes and banding negotiations, in a segment of the labour market where pay transparency is otherwise thin. For employers, it signals where salary offers sit relative to the profession's distribution — information that directly affects retention in roles that practices frequently struggle to fill.

Nursing in Practice has run this survey in prior years, and its results have historically fed reporting on general practice nurse pay trends across the UK. The 2026 edition follows the same format: respondents report their salary, role details and working patterns, and the aggregated findings are published for the profession.

What readers should watch for when the results land: whether reported average salaries have moved in line with recent NHS pay awards, how part-time and full-time responses compare, and what the spread between the lowest and highest reported pay reveals about regional and practice-level variation. Because the survey draws on a self-selecting sample rather than a census, results are best read as directional indicators rather than precise population estimates, and year-on-year comparisons carry more weight than any single headline figure.

The survey is open now to general practice nurses across the UK, and Nursing in Practice will publish the findings once responses are collected and analysed.