Allied Health Professions

Job market

The UK allied health job market

15 career paths, 242 NHS organisations across 12 regions and nations, and a newly qualified salary of £32,073 on band 5 in England for 2026/27. What a first allied health post looks like, who hires, what it pays where, and where the vacancies are actually advertised.

15 Career paths Fourteen professions; radiography splits into two
242 NHS organisations Trusts, health boards and HSC trusts in the dataset
£32,073 Band 5 starting salary England, 2026/27, before any London weighting
£56,515 Top of band 7 England, 2026/27 — advanced or team lead

How allied health hiring actually works

Allied health recruitment does not look like graduate recruitment in most other sectors. There is no milk round and no single application window. NHS organisations advertise posts as they fall vacant, all year round, and each advert is tied to a band on the Agenda for Change pay scale rather than to a salary the employer has set. That means the money is knowable before you apply: a band 5 post pays the same in Carlisle as it does in Cornwall, and the differences that remain are the high cost area supplement in and around London, the separate pay circulars the devolved nations publish, and whatever unsocial-hours or on-call payments the role attracts.

Almost every profession here starts on band 5, and the standard shape of a first post is a rotational one: you spend a fixed spell in each of several clinical areas before choosing a specialty. That is the single most useful thing to understand when you compare employers. A large acute trust can offer rotations you would otherwise have to change jobs to get, while a small specialist trust may offer depth in one area from day one. Neither is better; they suit different people. The professions that do not follow this pattern — the arts therapies in particular — tend to advertise single-handed posts in a defined service, often part-time, and frequently at band 6 rather than band 5.

Registration is UK-wide, so where you train does not decide where you can work. Hiring geography does, though, and it is uneven: the ITL1 regions differ sharply in how many employers they contain, how many of those are specialist rather than general, and how many universities are producing graduates locally. The tables below give you both halves of that picture — the employers who hire, and the courses feeding the same labour market — so you can see where competition for a first post is likely to be tightest.

The professions, side by side

Starting salaries are the bottom pay point of the profession’s usual entry band in England for 2026/27. Register and employment counts are UK-wide and are marked where the publisher groups several professions into one figure that cannot be split.

Entry band, starting salary and workforce size by profession
Profession Usual entry band Starting salary (England) On the register Median full-time pay Courses
Art therapist Band 6 £39,959 5,960 £37,599 11
Diagnostic radiographer Band 5 £32,073 48,437 Shared £48,439 67
Dietitian Band 5 £32,073 12,467 £42,079 57
Dramatherapist Band 6 £39,959 5,960 £37,599 5
Music therapist Band 6 £39,959 5,960 £37,599 8
Occupational therapist Band 5 £32,073 47,332 £44,040 129
Operating department practitioner Band 5 £32,073 16,921 £42,079 59
Orthoptist Band 5 £32,073 1,592 £37,599 6
Osteopath Band 5 £32,073 5,596 £37,599 12
Paramedic Band 5 £32,073 40,497 £53,818 80
Physiotherapist Band 5 £32,073 76,920 £43,532 139
Podiatrist Band 5 £32,073 11,904 £47,699 31
Prosthetist/orthotist Band 5 £32,073 1,260 £42,079 4
Speech and language therapist Band 5 £32,073 20,148 £45,511 51
Therapeutic radiographer Band 5 £32,073 48,437 Shared £48,439 18

“Shared” marks a register part that covers more than one designated title — the HCPC keeps one part for the arts therapies and one for radiography — so that count cannot be attributed to a single profession. Median full-time pay is the ONS ASHE figure for the profession’s SOC unit group across all sectors, not an NHS figure: for the professions that share a SOC code it covers the whole group.

What the ladder looks like once you are in

The band you start on is not the band you stay on. Agenda for Change progression within a band is time-served against appraisal, but progression between bands means applying for a different post. The shape of that ladder is the same across almost all of these professions, and these are the 2026/27 England figures for it.

The usual band progression — England, 2026/27
Band Stage What the post involves Starting Top of band
Band 5 Newly qualified First post after registration, usually rotational. £32,073 £39,043
Band 6 Specialist Typically two to four years in; a defined clinical specialty. £39,959 £48,117
Band 7 Advanced or team lead Clinical leadership, complex caseload, supervision. £49,387 £56,515
Band 8a Consultant or service lead Service-wide responsibility or consultant practice. £57,528 £64,750

Posts inside the Inner London high cost area zone add 20% of basic pay on top of these figures , subject to a floor of £5,794 and a ceiling of £8,746 (2026/27). Outer London and fringe zones pay less.

Where the jobs are

NHS organisations and approved courses in each region and nation, with the whole-economy median full-time salary beside them — the benchmark a band 5 figure is worth reading against.

Employers, courses and local pay levels by region
Region Nation NHS organisations Approved courses Median full-time pay
London England 31 86 £49,692 (2025)
North West England 31 71 £37,361 (2025)
South East England 30 73 £39,983 (2025)
West Midlands England 24 83 £37,064 (2025)
Scotland Scotland 22 58 £39,719 (2025)
Yorkshire and The Humber England 22 68 £35,682 (2025)
East of England England 20 53 £38,597 (2025)
South West England 18 63 £37,195 (2025)
East Midlands England 16 42 £35,600 (2025)
Wales Wales 12 31 £35,796 (2025)
North East England 10 34 £34,403 (2025)
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland 6 11 £37,052 (2025)

Regional job pages sit under each profession — pick a profession below, then a region. English employers are counted against the ITL1 region their headquarters sits in; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are counted as single units because their health boards and HSC trusts are the regional geography.

Job markets by profession

Art therapist jobs

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.

Starts at band 6£39,959 to start11 courses

Diagnostic radiographer jobs

Patients of all ages, from newborns to older people, who need imaging for diagnosis, screening, monitoring or image-guided treatment, including trauma, cancer, cardiac and emergency patients.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start67 courses

Dietitian jobs

People of all ages with medical conditions affected by diet — including digestive, kidney, metabolic and swallowing disorders, malnutrition, food allergy, obesity and eating disorders — as well as healthy populations.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start57 courses

Dramatherapist jobs

People of all ages — children, young people, adults and older people — with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, neurological conditions or serious illness.

Starts at band 6£39,959 to start5 courses

Music therapist jobs

People of all ages with emotional or mental health difficulties, learning or physical disabilities, developmental conditions including autism, neurological conditions, dementia, and life-limiting or palliative illness.

Starts at band 6£39,959 to start8 courses

Occupational therapist jobs

People of all ages recovering from surgery, stroke or injury, and people living with mental illness, learning disability, dementia, long-term conditions or physical disability who want to live more independently.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start129 courses

Operating department practitioner jobs

Patients of all ages undergoing planned or emergency surgery and other procedures requiring anaesthesia, alongside surgeons, anaesthetists, theatre nurses and support workers.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start59 courses

Orthoptist jobs

Babies, children and adults with squint, amblyopia, double vision, reduced or unstable vision, and patients with stroke, acquired brain injury, thyroid eye disease, glaucoma, diabetes or neurological conditions.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start6 courses

Osteopath jobs

Adults, older people, children and babies with musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction, sports and occupational injuries, pregnancy-related pain and chronic pain conditions.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start12 courses

Paramedic jobs

People of all ages with acute illness, injury, mental health crisis or long-term conditions who call for urgent help, from cardiac arrest and major trauma to falls, breathing problems and end-of-life care at home.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start80 courses

Physiotherapist jobs

People of all ages with musculoskeletal pain and injury, neurological conditions, respiratory and cardiac disease, frailty and falls risk, long-term conditions, and those recovering from surgery or critical illness.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start139 courses

Podiatrist jobs

People of all ages with foot and lower limb problems, particularly those living with diabetes, circulatory or neurological disease and arthritis, children with walking or lower limb pain, and athletes and dancers.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start31 courses

Prosthetist/orthotist jobs

People with limb loss including military veterans and people with vascular disease or diabetes, children with cerebral palsy and congenital conditions, and adults with arthritis, neurological conditions, sports injuries or spinal deformity.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start4 courses

Speech and language therapist jobs

Children and adults with speech, language, communication or swallowing needs, including people after stroke or brain injury, autistic people, people with learning disabilities, progressive neurological conditions, head and neck cancer and voice disorders.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start51 courses

Therapeutic radiographer jobs

Adults and children having radiotherapy for cancer, and their families and carers, throughout planning, daily treatment, side-effect management and follow-up.

Starts at band 5£32,073 to start18 courses

Where the actual vacancies are

This site does not carry live adverts. The NHS Jobs adverts API is authenticated and publishes no terms of reuse, the Find an apprenticeship recruitment API is gated behind an employer account, and the commercial aggregators attach licence conditions that a static open-data site cannot meet honestly. Rather than show you a stale or partial list, here is where to look — these are the boards employers actually post to.

NHS Jobs

The single national board for NHS England trusts. Almost every band 5 allied health post in England is advertised here first, and many trusts advertise nowhere else.

England

HealthJobsUK / Trac

The applicant-tracking system a large share of trusts and health boards run their recruitment on. Some organisations publish only to Trac, so it is worth searching separately from NHS Jobs.

EnglandWales

NHS Scotland recruitment

NHS Scotland boards recruit through one shared national system rather than through NHS Jobs. If you are looking at Scotland, this is the board to watch.

Scotland

HSC Recruitment

Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland recruits centrally for the HSC trusts. Northern Ireland sits outside both NHS Jobs and the Scottish system.

Northern Ireland

Find an apprenticeship

Where degree apprenticeship vacancies are advertised. An apprenticeship is a job you apply for, not a course you apply to, so this is the board that matters if that is your route in.

England

Next

Where this page’s data comes from

Vacancy sources are listed because this page describes their licence position, not because their advert content is republished here. No live advert data is reproduced on this site.