Police constable take-home pay 2026/27

How constable pay progression actually works

Pay doesn't go up automatically every year. You progress from one pay point to the next through your annual PDR — your Performance Development Review. In practice, most officers move up one pay point per year as long as performance is satisfactory, but the PDR gate is real. If there's a formal concern flagged, progression can be paused. That's unusual, but it happens.

The full climb from PP1 to PP7 takes seven years. PP5 (£37,737) and PP6 (£43,038) are where the bigger jumps land — particularly PP6, which represents a significant consolidation of the historic scale structure and has an outsized effect on your annual pension accrual for that year under the CARE formula.

The pension tier jump at PP5

Under PPS 2015, your pension contribution rate isn't marginal — it applies to your whole pensionable pay, not just the slice above a threshold. The current tiers (effective 1 April 2026) are:

• Up to £37,035 → 12.88%
• £37,036 to £79,587 → 13.88%

So a constable moving from PP4 (£35,106) to PP5 (£37,737) crosses the tier boundary. Their contribution rate jumps by 1 percentage point on the entire salary — not just the amount above £37,035. That's an extra £378/year in pension deductions. The gross pay increase covers it comfortably, but it's worth knowing before you've planned your budget around the gross figure in the pay circular.

Part-time officers can be caught by the reverse effect. Drop below £37,035 in pro-rated pay and you fall back to the 12.88% tier — which reduces your deductions, but also slightly reduces the pension you're building that year.

PP7 and the 40% tax question

The 3.5% award took PP7 from £50,256 to £52,014 on 1 September 2026, pushing it £1,744 above the higher-rate income tax threshold of £50,270. Until this year a top-of-scale constable sat £14 below that line; now they are over it on basic pay alone. Anything on top — overtime, detective allowance, rest-day payments — is taxed at 40% from the first pound. The threshold has been frozen at £50,270 since 2021, which is why a pay rise moved officers across it.

For a PP7 constable doing a 6-hour rest-day at short notice (time-and-a-half), the gross addition is around £166. At the 40% marginal rate plus 2% NI, roughly £96 of that reaches the account. Still worth doing — but knowing the after-tax figure in advance helps.

Add the Met/City London allowances (£10,079/year, of which £3,260 is pensionable), and even PP5 officers are comfortably into the 40% band: a PP5 Met constable is on £39,057 basic plus allowances, taking total gross to £49,136 — close enough that any overtime tips them into higher-rate.

The pre-2013 scale: why it exists

Officers who joined before April 2013 sit on a different pay scale, and that's not a temporary situation. The 2013 Police Regulations reforms created new entry terms for new recruits but gave contractual protection to those already in service. It's not a legacy quirk; the two scales co-exist permanently.

The main practical difference is the starting point. Pre-2013 officers generally entered at a higher point relative to the scale structure than a post-2013 joiner with the same years of service. The top-of-scale figure eventually aligns because pay awards apply equally to both scales.

London Weighting is pensionable — not a bonus

A lot of constables mentally account for London Weighting as extra spending money. Part of it is more than that: of the £10,079 Met and City of London officers receive, the £3,260 London Weighting is pay under the Police Regulations and counts toward your CARE pension accrual at the same rate as basic salary. The remaining £6,819 London Allowance does not — it is taxed, but it builds no pension.

You also pay 13.88% pension contributions on it (since it pushes most Met constables into the upper tier). That costs money now, but the pension you build from London Weighting is revalued by CPI+1.25% each year until you draw it. Over a 25-year Met career, the compounding pension value of that pensionable weighting is significant — well beyond the headline cash in each month's payslip.

Detective constables: same scale, possible allowance

Detective constables (DC) follow exactly the same pay scale as uniformed PCs. There's no separate DC pay progression. Some forces pay a detective allowance — typically around £1,800/year — but this isn't universal. Where it's paid, it's generally non-pensionable, so it doesn't affect your CARE accrual. Tick the option in the calculator above to see what it adds to your monthly take-home (it'll be taxed at your marginal rate).