Police Inspector Salary 2026/27: Pay Points, Take-Home Pay, Sergeant Jump

A police inspector in England and Wales earns £66,000 on pay point 0, rising to £71,396 on pay point 3, from 1 September 2026. Inspectors in the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police have their own scale, £68,788 to £74,206, and London Weighting on top. These figures include the 3.5% award the Home Secretary announced on 15 July 2026.

This guide sets out both inspector scales, an estimate of take-home pay at every point, the allowances inspectors can get (and the overtime they cannot), what you are paid as a temporary inspector, and how much a sergeant gains in each year after promotion. The figures are for England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland set police pay separately.

ProSyllabus is an independent study site. It is not part of the Home Office, the College of Policing, the Police Federation or any police force. Pay figures come from the official sources listed at the end; take-home figures are our own estimates.

PRRB Report 2026 and written statement HCWS264; 1 Sep 2026 figures and take-home are our arithmetic. Checked 6 Nov 2026.

The 1 September 2025 figures are the official pay points in the PRRB's 2026 report. The 1 September 2026 figures are those points increased by 3.5% and rounded to the nearest pound (our arithmetic); the Police Federation publishes the same figures. The London scale applies only to inspectors in the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police (Annex F, Part 4); every other force in England and Wales uses the national scale. The last column is the PRRB's count of where inspectors in England and Wales sat in March 2025 (Table 3.2): just over half were already at the top point.

Under Annex F to the Police Regulations 2003 you move up one point a year on the anniversary of your promotion, provided you meet the Pay Progression Standard (an annual performance and development review, no ongoing formal action under Stages 1 to 3 of the Unsatisfactory Performance or Attendance Procedures, any training your chief officer requires for it (no more than two priorities) and, if you manage others, completing the reviews and decisions due for your team). Pay point 3 is reached three years after promotion at pay point 0. A temporary promotion does not reset your increment date.

Our estimate for 2026/27 at the annual rate from 1 September 2026: basic pay only (no allowances, London Weighting or other payments); tax code 1257L with England and Wales Income Tax bands (Scotland differs); employee National Insurance category A; full police pension (2015 scheme) contributions at 13.88% of basic pay, the rate from 1 April 2026 when your pensionable pay in the previous scheme year was above £37,035 and below £79,588 (your own tier may differ), taken from pay before Income Tax; no student loan or other deductions. Your payslip will differ.

Every inspector pay point sits above £50,270, so even after the pension contribution comes off before tax, part of an inspector's pay is taxed at 40%. On these assumptions, each extra pound of basic pay at inspector level leaves you about 50p: 13.88p goes to the pension, 34.4p to Income Tax (40% of what is left after the pension) and 2p to National Insurance. That is why a pay rise looks smaller on the payslip than on the scale. The pension contribution is not lost money in the same way as tax: it builds your police pension.

London Weighting is added to the annual pay of officers in the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police only (Annex F, Part 10). The written statement raised it by 3.5% from 1 September 2026. The PRRB's report prints £3,273 a year as the value at the 3.9% it recommended; at the 3.5% actually awarded that comes to about £3,260 a year (our arithmetic, from the £3,150 rate it implies for 2025). So a London inspector on pay point 3 gets about £77,466 a year before tax, before any London Allowance.

The PRRB put the position plainly in its 2026 report: "although the inspecting ranks are not eligible for overtime, they are eligible for the Unsocial Hours Allowance. However, the median value of these payments is much lower than for constables and sergeants." The take-home estimates in this guide leave all of these payments out; use the tool above to add the ones you expect.

Yes on basic pay, at every point. The table compares a sergeant at the top of the scale (pay point 4, £58,175, where 75% of sergeants were in March 2025) with each inspector point outside London. The last row adds the median sergeant overtime of £3,777 (2024/25), taxed but not treated as pensionable. For sergeant pay points 2 and 3 and sergeant take-home pay in full, see our police sergeant salary guide.

So a newly promoted inspector on pay point 0 takes home about £3,921 a year more than a sergeant on pay point 4 who works no paid overtime, but only about £1,696 more than one who earns the median overtime. The gap widens each year as you climb the inspector scale. The NPCC told the PRRB there was evidence that inspectors' pay "stagnated for the first two years in rank" and that "some sergeants could earn more than newly promoted inspectors" (PRRB report, para 2.72).

Annex F, Part 1 says your pay on promotion must be higher than you would have received without the promotion, and not less than the point in the new rank immediately above that pay. A sergeant on any point is below £66,000, so the minimum is inspector pay point 0 (£68,788 in the Met and City of London).

Not yet. In evidence to the PRRB for 2026, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) proposed removing pay point 0, so that inspectors would progress through a three-point scale instead of four, at an estimated cost of £2.8 million a year and with full transition by April 2027. The PRRB said it would not comment on proposals to reform base pay until it could consider them alongside the police workforce strategy, and the Home Office said it needed clearer costs and benefits. The award from 1 September 2026 applies to all four inspector points, including pay point 0. The PRRB also said any review should test whether separate London scales for inspectors and chief inspectors are still justified.

On the NPPF route, Step Four is at least 12 months as a temporary inspector before you can be made substantive (see how to become a police inspector for the full route). Officers can also act up into the rank for shorter periods. The PRRB's 2026 report describes the current rules:

For a sergeant in England and Wales, the route to an inspector's pay is the National Police Promotion Framework (NPPF). Step Two is the inspectors' legal exam run by the College of Policing: 150 multiple-choice questions in three hours, scored on 140, with a 65% pass mark (91 correct). The next sittings are 11 to 13 May 2027 and 2 to 4 November 2027. A pass does not by itself bring a promotion or a pay rise: your force runs Steps Three and Four. Read our inspectors' exam format, syllabus and dates guide for the paper in full.

These play in our practice player: press Start, answer them, and the result page explains each answer from the legislation or Code of Practice it rests on. They are our own independent practice questions, not College of Policing questions.

This guide covers England and Wales only. In Scotland, police officers' pay is negotiated through the Police Negotiating Board for Scotland, and Scottish Income Tax bands are different, so neither the pay points nor the take-home estimates above apply. In Northern Ireland the PRRB makes a separate report on police pay, so check the figures for your own service.