Why a locum rate isn't a salary divided by hours
Divide a £39,959 salary by the 1,950 hours in a 37.5-hour week and you get £20.49 an hour. Put next to a locum rate of £30, it looks like no contest. It isn't, because the two numbers aren't measuring the same thing.
- The employee is paid for weeks they don't work. 27 days' leave and 8 bank holidays is seven weeks of salary for no shifts. A locum who takes the same time off earns nothing for it, so their year has 45 paid weeks, not 52.
- The employer pays a pension on top. In the NHS it's 23.7% of salary, which on £39,959 is another £9,470 a year. A locum has to earn that and pay it in themselves.
- The costs of practising are the locum's. GPhC fee, indemnity, membership, DBS, maybe an accountant: several hundred pounds a year that an employer would usually cover.
- Quiet weeks are unpaid too. A fortnight in February when nobody calls is a fortnight with no income.
The calculator takes your rate, your hours and the weeks you really work, subtracts your costs, and asks what salary an employer would have to pay, with the pension on top, to hand you the same money. It also runs the sum the other way: the hourly rate at which your locum year would exactly match the salary and pension, which is the figure to have in your head when a rate is offered.
A rule of thumb
For an NHS-style package with a 23.7% pension and seven weeks off, the break-even locum rate is roughly the salary divided by 1,350, plus a little for costs: about £30 an hour to match the bottom of Band 6, £36 for the top of it, and £37 to £42 across Band 7. With a 3% auto-enrolment pension instead, divide by about 1,650. Rates below those lines aren't necessarily wrong, but they're buying something other than money: flexibility, variety, or the shifts that fit around the rest of your life.
The rate you agreed versus the rate you got
Over a year, the number that matters is your effective rate: everything you earned, divided by all the hours you worked, including the unpaid lunch that ran into the afternoon and the shift that finished late. It's usually lower than the rate on the booking, and it's the honest figure to compare with a salary. Locumoid works yours out from the shifts you actually do, and shows how it trends over the year, so you can see whether the rates you're accepting are moving the right way.
Questions you might have
How do I convert a locum hourly rate to a salary?
Multiply the rate by the hours you'll actually work in a year, not by 52 weeks: a locum isn't paid for holidays, sick days or the weeks the phone doesn't ring. Take off what it costs you to practise (GPhC fee, indemnity, membership, DBS). Then remember an employer pays pension on top of a salary, 23.7% in the NHS, so divide what's left by 1.237 to get the salary that would hand over the same money. £30 an hour for 37.5 hours over 46 weeks is £51,750 of invoices, but equivalent to a salary of about £41,000 with an NHS pension.
What hourly rate matches a Band 6 salary?
Band 6 in England runs from £39,959 to £48,117 in 2026/27. With the 23.7% employer pension on top, the bottom of the band is a package of about £49,429. Spread over 45 working weeks of 37.5 hours, plus around £750 of costs, that's a locum rate of about £30 an hour. For the top of Band 6 it's nearer £36, and for Band 7 around £37 to £42.
Is locum pay better than being employed?
Per hour, usually. Per year, it depends on how many hours you get, how many weeks you take off, and what you'd have been given as an employee: paid holiday, a pension contribution, sick pay, maternity or paternity pay, and no fees to pay yourself. A rate that looks 40% better than a salary can be close to level once those are counted, and worse if you lose a few weeks to quiet periods. Put your own figures in above and see.
What does it cost to work as a locum pharmacist?
The GPhC renewal fee is £310 a year from September 2026 (£477 with the PSNI in Northern Ireland), professional indemnity around £220 for a non-prescriber, PDA or other membership, a DBS check, an accountant if you use one, and the time spent on invoicing, chasing payments and your tax return. Most of it is tax-deductible, but it still comes out of your rate.
And for a locum pharmacy technician?
The GPhC fee for technicians is £146 a year, with indemnity around £150. Locum technician rates of £15 to £25 an hour compare with Agenda for Change Band 4 (£28,392 to £31,157) and Band 5 (£32,073 to £39,043). Choose "Pharmacy technician" above and the calculator starts from technician figures.
What's the going locum pharmacist rate in the UK?
The most recent published figures put the UK average around £32 to £33 an hour in 2025, with England lower at around £30, Scotland and Wales nearer £36, and London among the lowest cities at around £25. Rates swing with demand: bank holidays, short notice and rural cover pay more. Locumoid shows anonymised rates by region and chain from real shifts, so you can see the going rate before you say yes.
Why does holiday matter so much?
An NHS employee gets 27 days' leave plus 8 bank holidays on appointment, 35 paid days a year, and more after five years. A locum who takes the same time off has 35 unpaid days, about seven weeks of the year earning nothing. That alone is worth around 15% of a salary, before the pension is counted.
Can a locum join the NHS pension?
Not as a self-employed community locum. You'd need a personal pension or SIPP, and the contributions come out of your rate rather than being added to it. That's why the calculator treats the employer's pension as part of the employed package: to match it, a locum has to earn it and pay it in themselves.