Free tool · Agenda for Change (England)
NHS unsocial hours calculator
Enter your band, your hourly rate and the shifts you worked. The calculator splits each shift into weekday, night, Saturday, Sunday and bank holiday time and estimates the enhancement you should see on your payslip.
An estimate for contracted hours in England, not payroll advice. Check your payslip and your trust's local agreements.
Keep your own record
Log every shift as you work it.
ShiftPro keeps the times you actually worked, your breaks and your pay rates on your iPhone, so you have your own record to check against ESR each month. No account, no ads.
How the calculator works
Agenda for Change pays an enhancement on top of your basic hourly rate for time worked in unsocial hours. In England the rates are:
| Pay band | Weekday nights (20:00 to 06:00) and Saturdays | Sundays and public holidays |
|---|---|---|
| Band 1 | time plus 47% | time plus 94% |
| Band 2 | time plus 41% | time plus 83% |
| Band 3 | time plus 35% | time plus 69% |
| Bands 4 to 9 | time plus 30% | time plus 60% |
Source: NHS Employers, unsocial hours payments (Section 2, England). Rates checked 24 September 2026.
Shifts that cross midnight are split at midnight, so a Saturday night that runs into Sunday is paid at the Saturday rate until 00:00 and the Sunday rate after it. Bank holidays for England and Wales are detected automatically from the GOV.UK bank holiday list. The embedded dates cover 1 January 2025 through 31 December 2028. Check dates outside that range manually; the calculator may treat a public holiday as an ordinary weekday.
The more-than-half rule. On a continuous evening or night shift that starts on a weekday which is not a public holiday, if more than half the shift falls between 20:00 and 06:00, the whole shift qualifies for the weekday night and Saturday enhancement. Only hours inside that time window count towards the threshold. Saturday, Sunday and public holiday hours still receive the rates shown in the table above.
Unpaid breaks are taken off each shift in proportion to its unsocial and daytime hours, because the calculator does not know exactly when you took your break.
Worked example
A Band 5 nurse on £17.50 an hour works a Wednesday night from 19:30 to 08:00 with a 30-minute unpaid break. Ten of the 12.5 hours fall between 20:00 and 06:00, so more than half the shift is unsocial and all 12 paid hours get the 30% enhancement: 12 × £17.50 × 30% = £63.00 on top of £210.00 basic pay.
What this calculator does not cover
Overtime is not included. Under section 3 of the NHS Terms and Conditions Handbook, Bands 1 to 7 are paid time and a half for hours over 37.5 a week (double time on a general public holiday) instead of the unsocial hours rate, and Bands 8 and 9 are not paid overtime. Part-time staff get plain time for extra hours until they pass 37.5 hours in the week. Resident doctors are on a different contract. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own terms. High cost area supplements are not included in the hourly rate used for enhancements. For how NHS rotas are built, see our guide to NHS shift rota patterns, and for keeping your own record of hours, read how to track rota hours and estimated pay.