Are your pay steps still worth having?
After the minimum wage rise, how much more do senior carers, team leaders and nurses earn than care assistants, and what would it cost to keep a meaningful gap?
Upload a payroll. Ask Orrery groups rates by role, shows the gap between each step now and after April, and costs options such as keeping seniors a set percentage above carers.
When people use it: Before April pay rises are agreed, and when seniors or nurses start leaving.
How it works, step by step
Upload the payroll
Role names do not need to match ours; Ask Orrery groups them and tells you how.
See the gaps
A senior carer step of under about 3% is rarely enough to make the extra responsibility worth taking.
Local competition for staff
Where other employers pay more for the same step, seniors leave first.
What you upload
- A recent payroll with role and hourly rate for each person
Files are stored privately for your account, never shared with anyone and never used to train AI. You can delete them at any time. Spreadsheets, CSV, PDF and Word files all work, in your own layout.
Try it with sample files
Made up files for a made up provider, Example Care Group, so you can see what Ask Orrery does with them.
Questions you can ask
- “From my Example House September payroll, show the average hourly rate by role and the gap between care assistants, senior carers and nurses, now and after the April 2027 rise if only the minimum changes.”
- “What would it cost a year to keep senior carers 6% above care assistants after April?”
- “Chart rates by role now and after April.”
Ask the data in plain English
A real question and answer from Ask Orrery, the assistant inside the platform, using the Example Care Group sample files above (October 2026). It works from your files and Orrery's data, and shows its sources.
The gap between care assistants and senior carers is 74p an hour now. It would shrink to between 20p and 45p after April 2027 if only the minimum moves. The nurse gap stays at roughly £10 an hour.
Weekday rates, Example House September 2026 payroll (simple average per person, not weighted by hours)
| Role | Now | If minimum is £13.02 | If minimum is £13.34 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Care assistant (42 staff) | £12.63 | £12.92 | £13.22 |
| Senior carer (10) | £13.37 | £13.37 | £13.42 |
| Nurse (12) | £23.22 | £23.22 | £23.22 |
| Senior carer minus care assistant | £0.74 | £0.45 | £0.20 |
| Nurse minus senior carer | £9.85 | £9.85 | £9.80 |
| Nurse minus care assistant | £10.59 | £10.30 | £10.00 |
Weekend rates are 50p higher for all three roles, so the gaps are the same.
How I worked it out
- "Only the minimum changes" means anyone paid below the new floor moves up to it, and everyone else stays put.
- The floor figures are the Low Pay Commission's projected range of £13.02 to £13.34 for April 2027. It is a projection, not confirmed (Orrery Kent Care Market Report).
- Nearly all care assistants sit at or just above today's £12.71 floor, so they all rise. Four of the ten senior carers are below £13.34, so they rise only in the high case. Nurses are unaffected.
Points to check
- One care assistant aged 21 and over is on £12.40. That is below the current £12.71 floor, so check it now.
- Two care assistants aged 18 to 20 are on £10.85. I do not have the April 2027 rate for their age band, so I left them unchanged.
- Salaried staff, including the managers, are excluded.
On these figures, the senior carer step is nearly gone in the high case. The "Are your pay steps still worth having?" and "Minimum wage check" guides in Orrery cover this. Take payroll or legal advice before changing pay.
Source: your Example House payroll September 2026.xlsx and the Orrery Kent Care Market Report.
Ask, chart and report, in plain English
Ask Orrery answers from Orrery's data and your own files, draws charts on request and builds reports you can save as PDF. These are real examples made with the sample files.
- Each minimum wage rise squeezes the steps above it unless the whole scale moves.
- Costing the full scale move is the honest budget; costing the minimum alone is the lowest case.
Answer this with your own files
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