The number is going on the advert. That's the easy part.
On 14 July 2026, the Office for Equality and Opportunity opened a consultation on equal pay and pay discrimination that would require UK employers to publish pay information in job adverts. If there's no advert, you'd get the pay details in writing before you attend an interview. It runs for 15 weeks and closes at 5pm on 27 October 2026.
Most of the coverage this week is written for HR teams. Compliance, tribunal risk, what your reward strategy needs to look like by 2028. Fine. But almost nobody's written the version for the person actually sitting in the interview.
So here's that version. Mandatory salary disclosure doesn't end the salary conversation, it moves it: out of the offer call, where you had time to think, and into the interview, where you don't.
What's actually being proposed
The headline is real, but the detail is thinner than the headlines suggest. This is a consultation, not a bill.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Opened | 14 July 2026, by the Office for Equality and Opportunity |
| Closes | 5pm, 27 October 2026 |
| Core proposal | Publish pay information in job adverts; where no advert exists, provide it in writing before interview |
| Format | Undecided. Consulting on exact salary vs pay range vs benchmark rate |
| Beyond base pay? | Also asking whether bonuses and other contractual benefits should be included |
| Enforcement | A new Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit, plus a reinstated statutory questionnaire procedure |
| Applies to | England, Scotland and Wales |
Note the fourth row, because it's the one that matters to you and it's the one getting glossed over. "Publish pay information" could mean £52,000. It could mean £38,000 to £61,000. It could mean a benchmark rate that describes a job nothing like the one you'd be doing. Those are wildly different worlds for a candidate, and the government hasn't picked one.
I'd put money on ranges. Ranges are what employers ask for when they're consulted about this, because a range preserves the flexibility they'd lose with a fixed number.
Transparency has been going backwards without a law
While everyone's been talking about pay transparency as an inevitability, UK employers have quietly been doing less of it.
Adzuna's data, reported by Personnel Today, found that in May 2026 just 40.96% of UK job ads included pay details. A year earlier it was 43.50%. Back in 2016 it was 64.6%.
Three in five UK job adverts today tell you nothing about the money. That's the market a law would be correcting, and it explains why ministers stopped waiting for employers to volunteer.
The bit that changes your interview
Once the range is printed, one thing disappears and one thing gets harder.
What disappears is the anchoring game. You know the one. They ask your expectations, you say a number too early, and that number becomes your ceiling for the rest of your time at the company. Published pay kills that, and good riddance. It also saves you from the four-round process that ends in an offer £12,000 below anything you'd sign.
What gets harder is everything after. Because a band is not a salary. A band advertised at £45,000 to £58,000 has thirteen grand of daylight in it, and somebody decides where you land in that gap. That decision gets made from what the hiring manager can repeat to a finance approver in a two-minute conversation you will never be in the room for.
So the question stops being "what do you want?" and becomes "why are you a £58,000 version of this person and not a £45,000 one?"
Nobody will ask you that directly. You have to answer it anyway.
Bands are wider than people realise
Look at what the spread actually costs you over a few years, since most pay reviews are percentage-based and compound off wherever you start.
| Placement in a £45k–£58k band | Year 1 | After 5 years at 4% |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom | £45,000 | £54,750 |
| Middle | £51,500 | £62,658 |
| Top | £58,000 | £70,566 |
Same job. Same title. Same advert. A £15,817 gap by year five, and it never closes, because the percentage that grows your salary is growing a smaller number.
That's what a single interview conversation is worth.
Wanting it isn't evidence
I've heard this exact answer a hundred times. Candidate sees a range, gets to the end of the interview, and says some version of: "I'd be looking at the top of the band, given my experience."
And then stops. That's the whole pitch. Given my experience.
Every candidate has experience. That's why they're in the room. "Given my experience" is not an argument, it's a placeholder where an argument should be. The hiring manager nods politely, writes nothing down, and puts you at the midpoint like everyone else.
The candidates who land at the top do something different, and it comes from specificity rather than confidence. They've handed over a fact the manager can carry into the pay conversation without needing to remember how it was said.
Compare:
| Doesn't travel | Travels |
|---|---|
| "I've got a lot of experience with this." | "I've done this at 3x the volume you described, with a team half the size." |
| "I'm quite senior for this role." | "I was already owning the thing your advert lists as the stretch goal." |
| "I'm a fast learner." | "I picked up your exact stack in six weeks and shipped the migration." |
The right column survives being repeated by someone else. That's the only test that matters, because the person deciding your number is going to be quoting you from memory to someone in finance.
What to do about it now
The rules are years out. Ministers have signalled a phased rollout so employers and the tribunal system can adjust. But four in ten UK adverts already show pay, so you can practise this today.
- Read the band as a question, not a gift. If it's £45k to £58k, the advert is asking you to prove which end you're on. Decide your answer before you walk in.
- Find the top-of-band signal in the advert. There's usually one responsibility listed that separates a senior hire from a junior one. Have a concrete story for that specific thing.
- Use STAR structure for the evidence. Situation, task, action, result. The result is the part that carries a number into a pay discussion, and it's the part most people skip.
- Raise it late, and frame it as calibration. After you've made the case: "I saw the range on the advert. Based on the scope I've been running at, I'd be aiming at the upper end. Does that match how you're thinking about the role?" You're inviting a response, not issuing a demand.
- Say it out loud before the day. Not in your head. Out loud.
That last one isn't filler. Talking about your own money is the single most reliable place UK candidates fall apart, and it's a delivery problem more than a content problem. People who write a perfectly good justification will then hedge it, apologise through it, or bury the number in a clause so soft nobody notices it was said.
When you practise with Instant Interview, the feedback catches exactly that. Your words per minute spiking when you hit the money question, the filler rate climbing through the sentence that was supposed to be your strongest, the STAR score dropping because the result got left off the one story that needed it most. You can't hear that in your own head. You can hear it in a recording.
This isn't law yet, and that cuts both ways
The consultation closes 27 October 2026. Then ministers weigh responses, then legislation, then a phased rollout. Nobody's advert is changing this autumn. If you've got an interview next month, the market you're interviewing into is the same one you had last month, where three in five ads still hide the number and the UK job market stays tight.
But the direction is set, and it's the same direction the EU took with its Pay Transparency Directive. The number's going to be on the page eventually.
When it is, the advantage stops going to whoever found the number first. Everyone will have the number. It goes to whoever can say out loud, on the spot and without flinching, why they belong at the top of the band.
You can practise that. Most people won't.
Jacob, Instant Interview
