England's senior doctors plan a strike on 25 November. Will a new offer stop them?
Consultants, the most senior hospital doctors in England, will strike for two days from 25 November over pay and working hours.
What happened
Consultant doctors in England will strike for two days from in a dispute over pay and working conditions. Health Secretary Yvette Cooper called the strike irresponsible.
Consultants in England will strike for two days from . Consultants are the most senior doctors in hospitals. From 06:59 GMT on they will give only emergency care, as on Christmas Day, so most planned operations and appointments are likely to be moved. The British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ union, announced the strike on .
The dispute is about pay and hours. The BMA says consultants’ pay has fallen by a quarter since 2009-10 once inflation is counted, and it wants the working week cut from 40 to 35 hours. Days before the strike was announced, the government proposed a 2.4% pay rise for all doctors next year. The union called it the last straw. Consultants earn £152,000 a year on average, with overtime and awards.
The government says the strike is not needed. Health Secretary Yvette Cooper said the two sides had been in “constructive discussions“ and called the strike “irresponsible“. A Department of Health and Social Care source said the union’s demands would cost taxpayers over £2bn. In the July vote, 76% of consultants who took part backed a strike. The government says that is only about one in five consultants in England, because nearly half are not in the BMA.
The strike action for consultants in England will take place between 06:59 on and 06:59 on .
BMA, Consultants announce strike action, 26 October 2026
The union has left time for a deal. The leaders of its consultants committee, Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta, said: “The Government has four weeks to avoid any action taking place.“ Consultants last went on strike in England in 2023, for nine days over four strikes. Resident doctors, the younger hospital doctors, accepted a deal in June that ended more than three years of strikes.
Sources: bbc.co.uk
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a union of health workers in England set dates for a strike between November and March, at least two months after its strike vote and after talks with the government that brought no deal. We found seven such strikes from 2016 to 2025, five by doctors and two by nurses. Six began on the first day. None of them was a strike by consultants.
Show the other 5 cases
The Read
The union’s words point both ways. Its leaders say “that road has now run out“, and they called the latest pay proposal, 2.4% for next year, the last straw. They also gave the government four weeks and said they look forward to hearing from Yvette Cooper. The one strike of the seven that was called off, by nurses in 2023, ended when the health secretary agreed to talks on pay. In resident doctors called off a strike two days before it began, after a last-minute offer of faster pay rises next year.
There are reasons for doubt. Five of the seven strikes were by BMA doctors, and the employer was the government in England each time. None was by consultants. In Wales in 2024, consultants called off their first planned strike after a “significant proposal“ from the Welsh government. This time the government has 30 days before the strike, while in six of the seven earlier strikes it had 15 to 22 days.
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