Prison Officer Hourly Rate 2026: £19.06 at Band 3 Maximum

In shortOfficers are salaried, so an hourly rate is a conversion: annual pay divided by 52.143 weeks and by contract hours.

The honest starting point is that prison officers are salaried, not paid by the hour. HMPPS publishes annual pay for each band and contract, and the Pay Review Body reproduces them in Appendix E of its 2026 report.

We use the straightforward conversion: annual pay divided by 52.143 weeks (365 / 7) and by the contract hours.

If you are on a London scale or a market-supplement prison, add the difference from the zone tables in prison officer pay London and market supplements; we show examples further down. To model your own figure, use the prison officer salary calculator.

Base

Pay before the unsocial hours allowance.

Including allowance

The figure HMPPS advertises, because the 20% (25% at Band 2) is paid on contracted hours and is pensionable. For comparing with another job's hourly rate, or with overtime-style payments such as Payment Plus, use this figure, since it is what you are actually paid for your contracted hours.

In shortDivide your annual contracted pay by 52.143 and then by your weekly contracted hours.

The only choices are which annual figure to use and which hours to divide by. Use the annual figure for your contract (it should include the 20% UWH, any pensionable additional hours, and exclude non-pensionable extras you want to treat separately) and the weekly contracted hours that figure covers.

1. Take your annual contracted pay from your contract or payslip, including unsocial hours allowance. At Band 3 pay point 3 on 37 hours that is £36,778.
2. Divide by 52.143 (weeks in a year) to get weekly pay: £36,778 / 52.143 = £705.33.
3. Divide by your contracted hours: £705.33 / 37 = £19.06 an hour.
4. To see base pay only, repeat with the base figure: £30,648 / 52.143 / 37 = £15.89.

In shortMore contracted hours give a slowly rising hourly rate: £19.06 on 37 hours and £19.37 on 41 at Band 3 pay point 3.

• 37-hour contract45%Share of Band 3 staff at 31 July 2025 (PSPRB analysis of HMPPS data)
• 39 hours, two ACH29%
• 39 hours, two ACHP15%
• 41 hours, four ACH9%No more than 1% on one or three ACH

After training HMPPS says officers can choose a 39 or 41-hour contract, and the PSPRB tables also publish 38 and 40-hour versions. Extra committed hours are priced a little above the contracted hourly figure.

At Band 3 pay point 3, the including-UWH hourly figure on 37 hours is £19.06, on the 41-hour contract it works out at £19.37.

The take-home consequence is a bigger annual pay for more hours, but at a lower real hourly 'benefit' than headline percentages suggest, since tax and the higher pension band take a share and because you give up more hours of your week.

The full question is covered in prison officer contract hours: 37, 39 or 41; the figures below are the arithmetic.

In shortOur arithmetic suggests non-pensionable ACH is priced at about 1.4 times base (£22.23 an extra hour) and pensionable ACHP at the normal £19.06 rate; this is inferred, not a stated HMPPS rule.

• Extra hour, ACH£22.23About 1.4 times the £15.89 base hourly rate; £22.24 on 40 and 41 hours
• Extra hour, ACHP£19.06Exactly the including-UWH hourly rate
• Pay point 1, extra hourAbout £21.12

This section is arithmetic, not policy, and we label it carefully because the HMPPS policy on how Additional Committed Hours are priced is not in the sources we read.

At pay point 3 the 38-hour figure (£37,937) is £1,159 above the 37-hour figure (£36,778). Divided by 52.143 weeks, that is £22.23 for the extra hour a week.

The 39-hour ACHP figure (£38,766) is £1,988 above 37 hours, or £994 per extra hour a year, which is £19.06 an hour. So the tables look as if ACHP is priced at the normal contracted hourly rate with UWH, while the non-pensionable ACH is priced at roughly 1.4 times base.

• That is consistent with the PSPRB saying ACH and ACHP attract UWH and that the P version is pensionable, but we are inferring the pricing.
• The PSPRB notes that the 'P' implies pensionability for the additional hours themselves, which we could not confirm, so check your contract.
• If you are choosing between a 39-hour ACH and ACHP contract, you may be choosing between higher pay now (ACH) and extra pensionable earnings (ACHP) with the same hours.
• The pension value is easy to estimate with the 2.32% alpha accrual: an extra pensionable £1,988 a year builds about £46 of annual pension for each year, before revaluation. See alpha pension explained.

In shortPayment Plus at £23 an hour is above the hourly rate for Bands 3 and 4 but below Band 5 pay points 1 and 3, and Band 2 base sits just above the National Living Wage.

• National Living Wage (21 and over)£12.71An hour from 1 April 2026, up 4.1%
• Band 2 OSG baseAbout £13.17An hour; about £16.46 including the 25% UWH
• Payment Plus£23An hour, from 1 April 2026

For the closed grades the PSPRB made rates National Living Wage compliant from 1 April 2026 (Recommendation 4). The PSPRB also said again that there should be no formal link between Band 2 pay and the NLW.

• Payment Plus sits above the including-UWH hourly figure for Band 3 (by £3.94 at pay point 3 and £4.90 at pay point 1) and Band 4 (by £1.58), but below it for Band 5 pay point 1 (£23.27) and pay point 3 (£24.39).
• The Board noted that after the 3.5% award some Band 4 and 5 staff doing Payment Plus duties are paid less than their normal hourly rate and considered that reasonable as those duties are Band 3 duties.
• Band 2 overtime is different again: 1.33 times base on weekdays and 1.75 times at weekends, plus £5 an hour, non-pensionable. On our figures that is about £22.52 and £28.05 an hour; see prison officer weekend pay.

In shortLondon scales apply the same structure with higher cash figures, while market supplements are non-pensionable and not blended into the hourly rate.

• Pay point 1, 37h£18.10, £20.13, £21.19An hour: National, Outer London, Inner London (annual £34,928, £38,840, £40,876)
• Pay point 3, 37h£19.06, £21.20, £22.31An hour (annual £36,778, £40,896, £43,039)
• £3,500 supplementAbout £1.81 an hourAt 37 hours; not a contracted-hours allowance

Market supplements are £1,500, £2,000, £3,000 or £3,500 a year at 18 named prisons, paid in 12 monthly instalments, non-pensionable and not part of base pay. HMPPS's own tables include them in the quoted salary for those prisons, so the Bullingdon pay point 1 figure of £38,428 is £34,928 plus £3,500.

• Outer London is Belmarsh, Downview, Feltham, High Down, Isis and the controllers' offices at Bronzefield and Thameside.
• Inner London is Brixton, Pentonville, Wandsworth, Westminster headquarters and Wormwood Scrubs.
• These zone memberships are in the PSPRB report; see prison officer pay by region.

In shortA Band 3 pay point 3 officer nets about £14.72 an hour against £19.06 gross, about 77%, and keeps about £16.56 of a £23 Payment Plus hour.

• Net a yearAbout £28,396On £36,778; alpha at 5.45%, tax code 1257L, no other deductions
• Net per hourAbout £14.72Against £19.06 gross; the ratio is about 77%
• Extra £23 hourAbout £16.56Taxed at 28%: 20% income tax plus 8% NI; non-pensionable

A gross hourly rate overstates what lands in your account. Our model uses 2026/27 income tax and National Insurance, and the same 52.143 weeks and 37 hours.

The detailed deduction workings, band by band and for 39 and 41-hour contracts, are in take-home pay by band.

In shortHMPPS publishes no official hourly rate, so every figure here rests on a stated conversion; where we could not verify something we say so.

For Scotland, SPS lists a Residential Officer starting salary of £37,682 from 1 April 2026, rising to £44,248 within three years, but we do not convert it because we have not verified its contracted weekly hours.

If your payslip shows an hourly figure that differs from ours by more than a few pence, the likely reasons are the divisor, the allowance treatment or a contract variation; ask payroll for their basis in writing. For the current award background see prison officer pay rise 2026/27.