market analysis
In April 2026, PharmSee took a snapshot of NHS Jobs' hourly-rate pharmacist postings and found a thin, unevenly transparent market: of 56 hourly-paid pharmacist listings inside a 200-row sample, only 15 (27%) stated a specific number, with the rest marked "Negotiable per hour." A repeat of the same query on 30 September 2026 finds the segment has grown sharply — but pay transparency has not kept pace.
Within the same 200-listing NHS Jobs sample (drawn from a keyword search for "pharmacist," which PharmSee's aggregator caps at 200 rows per query), 96 postings are now priced by the hour, up from 56 in April. Of those, 20 disclose a specific rate or range — a 21% disclosure share, down from 27% five months earlier. The absolute number of disclosed-rate adverts rose from 15 to 20, but it is being diluted by a larger pool of hourly listings that mostly don't name a figure.
What the disclosed rates show
The 20 adverts with a stated rate range from £21.81 to £55.00 an hour, against £21.81–£36.41 in April. The table below lists every disclosed-rate posting in the current sample, ranked by advertised value (ranges shown as advertised; where a role gives a band, PharmSee has not picked a single "true" figure).
| Employer | Role | Location | Advertised rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vertis Health | Locum out-of-hours prescribing pharmacist (joint post with advanced practitioners and paramedics) | Worcestershire, WR11 | £40.00–£55.00/hr |
| Alliance for Better Care CIC | ADHD Clinical Pharmacist (Independent Prescriber) | Crawley, RH11 | £36.92/hr |
| NHS Professionals Limited | Advanced Pharmacist – Emergency Medicine | Watford, WD18 | £36.41/hr |
| North West Surrey Integrated Care Services | Remote Prescribing Pharmacist | Staines-upon-Thames, TW18 | £36.00/hr |
| Military Medical Personnel (via Honeybee Recruitment) | Regional Pharmacist | Wiltshire, SP9 | £35.66/hr |
| Military Medical Personnel (via Honeybee Recruitment) | Pharmacist | Leicestershire, LE12 | £35.66/hr |
| A GP practice on Colney Hatch Lane, north London | Clinical Pharmacist | London, N10 | £28.00–£40.00/hr |
| St George's Medical Centre | Experienced Prescribing Pharmacist | London, NW4 | £30.00–£37.76/hr |
| NHS Professionals Limited | Clinical Pharmacist – Aseptic | Reading, RG1 | £28.90/hr |
| NHS Professionals Limited | Clinical Pharmacist | Reading, RG1 | £28.90/hr |
| NHS Professionals Limited | Band 7 Pharmacist | Watford, WD18 | £28.36/hr |
| Bridgwater Bay Primary Care Network | Clinical Pharmacist | Bridgwater, BS26 | £27.50–£29.00/hr |
| K&W Healthcare Ltd | Clinical Pharmacist – Independent Prescriber (GP experience) | London, NW9 | £25.00–£30.00/hr |
| Braintree Primary Care Network | PCN Clinical Pharmacist | Braintree, CM7 | £26.56/hr |
| K&W Healthcare Ltd | Clinical Pharmacist – Independent Prescriber | London, NW9 | £25.00–£28.00/hr |
| K&W Healthcare Ltd | Clinical Pharmacist – Independent Prescriber | London, NW9 | £23.00–£30.00/hr |
| Jurassic Coast Primary Care Network | Clinical Pharmacist | Bridport, DT6 | £25.49–£26.94/hr |
| Avonside Health Centre | Clinical Pharmacist (Prescribing) | Warwick, CV34 | £23.49–£26.34/hr |
| Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust | Bank Pharmacist Band 6/7 (Chase Farm outpatients only) | Enfield, EN2 | £21.81/hr |
| Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust | Bank Pharmacist Band 6/7 (Royal Free outpatients only) | London, NW3 | £21.81/hr |
The midpoint of the 20 disclosed rates is now £30.61 an hour and the median £28.63, both slightly above April's £28.31 mean and £27.98 median — but that modest rise sits alongside a falling disclosure share, so it describes the visible minority of adverts, not the market as a whole.
The floor hasn't moved. The rest of the list has turned over
The one figure that is identical in both snapshots is the bottom of the range: Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust's £21.81 Band 6/7 outpatient bank rate appears in April and again in September, unchanged. Beyond that floor, most of the list has turned over. Practice Plus Group supplied two of April's top four disclosed rates (£36.00 at two separate sites); neither appears in the September disclosed sample. Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation Trust's £34.86 and £28.64 bank rates are likewise absent from the current list. PharmSee's data cannot say whether these employers stopped advertising, filled the roles, or simply switched to "Negotiable" — only that they are no longer visible in the disclosed-rate sample.
In their place, six of the September entries are salaried general practice or primary care network posts paid by the hour — Bridgwater Bay, Braintree and Jurassic Coast PCNs, plus three individual GP practices — none of which appeared in April's published rate table. Whether that reflects genuine growth in hourly-paid primary care pharmacist hiring or simply a different slice of the market surfacing in this particular 200-row window is not something a single repeat snapshot can settle; it would take a third reading to tell a trend from a one-off shift in feed composition.
Reading the numbers
This is a small, self-selecting sample: 20 disclosed rates out of a NHS Jobs board that currently carries around 525 active listings PharmSee tracks in the pharmacy sector, and the underlying "pharmacist" keyword search is itself capped at 200 rows per query in both the April and September readings, so neither figure is a full census. The rates above are advertised pay, not confirmed take-home pay, and several are quoted as a range rather than a single number. Readers comparing roles should treat this as a directional snapshot of NHS Jobs' hourly-rate segment, not a market-wide pay scale.
For a fuller picture of current listings, PharmSee's jobs search covers all tracked pharmacy vacancies, and the salary pages collect PharmSee's wider advertised-pay data by role and region. Pharmacies and their staffing levels across England can be explored on the pharmacy locator.
- PharmSee jobs data, NHS Jobs feed snapshot, 30 September 2026
- Bank pharmacist hourly rates UK 2026: top-paying employers — PharmSee's April 2026 snapshot, used as the baseline for this comparison