Members of the armed forces, teachers, police officers, prison officers, doctors, the judiciary, senior civil servants and senior military personnel will all see pay rises this year to reflect their efforts in the battle against Covid-19.

Nearly 900,000 workers will benefit across the UK, with teachers and doctors seeing the largest rises at 3.1% and 2.8% respectively.

Police and prison officers will both have a 2.5% rise in pay. This comes as 6,435 new police officers were recruited to the force between November 2019 and March 2020, of which 3,005 joined specifically as part of the uplift programme to recruit 20,000 people over the next three years.

The armed forces will receive a 2% uplift with 16,340 new recruits signing up between April 2019 and March 2020, an increase of 30.9% compared with the previous 12-month period.

This pay rise follows the settlement for more than one million NHS workers who continue to benefit from the three-year Agenda for Change pay deal, under which the starting pay for a newly qualified nurse has increased by more than 12% since 2017/18.

This means nurses who are still moving up their pay structures will receive an average 4.4% rise this year. There are 12,220 more nurses and health visitors working for the NHS compared to last year.

Chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak said: “These past months have underlined what we always knew – that our public sector workers make a vital contribution to our country and that we can rely on them when we need them.

“It’s right therefore that we follow the recommendations of the independent pay bodies with this set of real-terms pay rises. Each award is recommended by independent pay review bodies, and this year government accepted the headline recommended rise for each workforce.

“This year’s pay awards reflect the enormous effort made by those in the public sector in responding to the unprecedented challenges for the country during the Covid-19 outbreak.”

The pay awards for the armed forces, prison officers, senior civil servants and NHS staff work will be backdated to April this year, whereas the pay rise for police and teachers starts in September which run on a different pay year (September to August).