Allied Health Professions

Mental health trust · London

Art therapist at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust employs 22.5 full-time equivalent art therapists as at 31 December 2025. Working as an art therapist at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust in London means a mental health caseload across inpatient units, community mental health teams, crisis services and, in most organisations, child and adolescent and secure services. Band 6 starts at £39,959 on the England 2026/27 scale.

Art therapistBand 6 entryEngland
22.5 Art therapists employed here Full-time equivalent, 31 December 2025
£39,959 Band 6 starting salary England, 2026/27 scale
£49,692 Median pay, all occupations London, 2025 — the benchmark, not an NHS figure
Not published Staff survey response rate Not in the open dataset for this organisation

The job at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Art therapists use drawing, painting, sculpture and other visual media as the main means of communication in a therapeutic relationship. Rather than teaching art, they help people explore feelings that are hard to put into words, working towards agreed aims over a series of individual or group sessions. Day to day this means assessing referrals, setting up a consistent studio space, holding difficult material safely, keeping clinical records, attending clinical supervision and feeding back to multidisciplinary teams. Children, young people, adults and older people living with mental health difficulties, trauma, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, dementia, life-limiting illness or emotional and behavioural difficulties.

At a mental health trust such as Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, that work means a mental health caseload across inpatient units, community mental health teams, crisis services and, in most organisations, child and adolescent and secure services. Rotations here tend to move between inpatient and community teams rather than between body systems, and supervision arrangements matter more than in almost any other setting. Across the profession as a whole, art therapists work in settings including NHS mental health trust, NHS acute trust, community mental health team, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and mainstream and special schools — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust pays band 6 exactly what every other NHS employer in England pays it: £39,959 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in London was £49,692 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.

Employer
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Organisation type
Mental health trust
Based in
London
Region
London
Nation
England
Regulator
HCPC registration required
Usual starting band
Band 6
Full-time equivalent staff
22.5
Local courses
4 in London

Published workforce for this profession

Art therapist staff groups published for Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Staff group Full-time equivalent As at
Allied Health Professionals: Art Therapist 22.5 31 December 2025

What you would be paid, band by band

England Agenda for Change rates, 2026/27 — the same at every NHS employer in the nation.

Agenda for Change pay for art therapists in England
Band Starting Point 2 Point 3 Top of band
Band 5 £32,073£34,592£39,043 £39,043
Band 6 Entry level £39,959£42,170£48,117 £48,117
Band 7 £49,387£51,932£56,515 £56,515
Band 8a £57,528£60,417£64,750 £64,750
£32,073 Band 5 · Newly qualified First post after registration, usually rotational.
£39,959 Band 6 · Specialist Typically two to four years in; a defined clinical specialty.
£49,387 Band 7 · Advanced or team lead Clinical leadership, complex caseload, supervision.
£57,528 Band 8a · Consultant or service lead Service-wide responsibility or consultant practice.

Art therapist pay in detail · The whole England scale · Band 6 art therapists

Where to train for this job near London

4 universities in London run an approved pre-registration course for art therapists. Placements are commissioned with the trusts and boards nearest the university, so these are the courses most likely to place students with Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, across pre-registration master’s routes.

Approved courses for art therapists in London
Course University Route Length
Art Psychotherapy MA Brunel University London MSc pre-reg 2 years
MA Art Psychotherapy Goldsmiths, University of London MSc pre-reg 2 years
MA Integrative Arts Psychotherapy Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education MSc pre-reg
MA Art Psychotherapy University of Roehampton MSc pre-reg 2 years

The national picture

UK-wide figures for the profession, not for this organisation.

Published national figures for art therapists
Measure Value Geography As at
HCPC registrants on the 'Art Therapists' part of the Register (all application routes) - a single register part shared by art-therapist, dramatherapist, music-therapist, so this count is not specific to one designated title 5,960 registrants United Kingdom (HCPC Register; includes registrants trained outside the UK) 1 April 2025
People in employment in the UK in SOC 2020 unit group 2229 (Therapy professionals n.e.c.), Annual Population Survey estimate 51,800 people in employment United Kingdom 31 March 2026
Median gross annual pay, full-time employee jobs (ASHE Table 14.7a, SOC 2020 2229) 37,599 GBP United Kingdom 2025
Mean gross annual pay, full-time employee jobs (ASHE Table 14.7a, SOC 2020 2229) 39,897 GBP United Kingdom 2025

Art therapists at other organisations in London

Same registration, same bands, different caseload — the organisation type is the variable, and the size of the establishment tells you how many colleagues and how many rotation slots sit behind the job title. The largest art therapists team published in London is East London NHS Foundation Trust, at 41.8 full-time equivalent, against 22.5 at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

Published establishments for art therapists at NHS organisations in London
Organisation Type Based in Full-time equivalent
East London NHS Foundation Trust Mental health trust London 41.8
North London NHS Foundation Trust Mental health trust London 24.8
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust This page Mental health trust London 22.5
South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust Mental health trust London 12.7
West London NHS Trust Mental health trust Southall 10.3
North East London NHS Foundation Trust Mental health trust Ilford 10.2
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust Mental health trust Beckenham 7.9
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust Specialist trust London 1

A blank establishment figure means the organisation did not return one for this profession, not that it employs nobody. Only organisations whose type runs this service are listed.

Other allied health professions at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Next steps

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