Resident doctors in England to strike for five days over pay

Resident doctors in England are due to stage a five-day strike from Monday 15 June to Friday 19 June, after the British Medical Association said the government had failed to deliver an improved pay offer. The walkout will be one of the longest single rounds of industrial action by doctors in the recent dispute, and is expected to place renewed strain on a health service already working hard to bring down waiting lists.

Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, make up a large share of the medical workforce in hospitals and cover everything from emergency departments to routine ward care. Their absence over a sustained period inevitably ripples across the system, forcing trusts to reorganise rotas, postpone planned work and rely more heavily on senior colleagues to maintain safe staffing.

The decision to proceed follows a period of talks that the union said had not yielded the kind of movement it was seeking. While both sides have signalled a desire to avoid further disruption, the gap between the BMA's expectations and the government's position has proved difficult to bridge.

The dispute over pay restoration

The dispute centres on the union's long-standing demand for pay restoration. The independent pay review body recommended a 3.5% increase for doctors, which the BMA has argued falls short of inflation and of meaningful progress on restoring earnings. The union maintains that the real value of resident doctors' pay has been eroded over more than a decade, and that recent settlements, while welcome, have not reversed that decline.

Ministers, for their part, have pointed to the awards already made in previous rounds as evidence of good faith, and have warned that there are limits to what the public finances can sustain. The standoff reflects a familiar tension in public sector pay disputes, between a workforce that feels its living standards have slipped and a Treasury wary of settlements that could feed wider inflation or set precedents across other professions.

“We do not take this action lightly, but doctors feel they have been left with no alternative.”

— A British Medical Association spokesperson

Impact on services

Hospitals have warned that some appointments and procedures may be affected, though NHS trusts have stressed that other staff, including consultants and specialist doctors, will continue working to keep as many services running safely as possible. Emergency and urgent care will be prioritised, and trusts have put contingency plans in place to manage the most pressing cases throughout the five days.

Patients are likely to notice the impact most in planned, non-urgent care, where some operations and outpatient clinics may be rescheduled. Trusts have asked the public to continue using services as normal in an emergency, to call 999 in life-threatening situations and to make use of NHS 111 and community pharmacies for less serious concerns.

• The strike runs from Monday 15 June to Friday 19 June across England
• The dispute centres on the BMA's call for full pay restoration
• The pay review body recommended a 3.5% increase, which the union says is inadequate
• Emergency and urgent care will be prioritised during the walkout
• Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise by their hospital

A long-running dispute

The action marks the latest in a series of walkouts since 2023, with resident doctors having taken several rounds of strike action across 2025 and earlier in 2026. The dispute has become one of the most protracted in the history of the NHS, outlasting changes in government and repeated attempts to find a settlement acceptable to both sides.

Each round of action has added to the backlog of postponed care, complicating efforts to reduce waiting times that grew sharply during and after the pandemic. Health leaders have repeatedly warned that recovery in elective care depends on industrial stability, making the resolution of the pay dispute a matter of more than just principle for the workforce involved.

Patients with appointments during the strike period have been advised to attend unless they are told otherwise by their hospital. Trusts have said they will contact those whose care needs to be rearranged, and have urged people not to assume their appointment is cancelled simply because of the strike.

What happens next

Much will depend on whether the two sides can return to the table once the five days have passed. The BMA has indicated that further action remains possible if no improved offer emerges, while the government faces the difficult task of finding a settlement that satisfies the profession without unsettling wider pay restraint. For patients, the immediate priority is navigating a week of disruption, but the longer-term question is whether this round of action finally creates the conditions for a lasting deal.