Investment into the GP contract for 2026/27 will rise by a total of £485m, the equivalent of a 3.6% cash growth, it has been announced today.
Changes to the contract also see the introduction of a new £292m practice-level GP reimbursement scheme to boost GP capacity and help surgeries provide same day access for clinically urgent patients, which will become a contractual requirement.
Updates include a loosening of restrictions around funds that can be claimed under ARRS for hiring GPs and an additional £25m available under QOF payments, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England has said.
In a letter sent to practices seen by Management in Practice, Dr Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and community services at NHS England explained that the funding deal, which takes the contract value to £13,863m, assumes pay growth of 2.5% for 2026/27.
The new practice-level reimbursement scheme will allow surgeries to recruit new GPs or fund more sessions from GPs already working for them, using £292 million of funding repurposed from the PCN-level Capacity and Access Payment (CAP).
The changes will support clinically urgent same day access in general practice,’ Dr Doyle said, adding that ‘GP capacity is the most effective and sustainable way to improve access and patient experience of general practice.’
To further improve access, the restrictions under ARRS funding rules that mean only recently qualified GPs can be hired via the scheme will be lifted. ‘The maximum reimbursement that PCNs can claim for GPs employed via the ARRS will be increased to reflect that the recruited GPs will not only be those who have recently qualified,’ the letter says. This means PCNs will be able to claim up to a maximum of the top of salaried GP pay range plus employment on costs.
The changes to QOF will make 18 additional points available to practices worth £25m. Their aim is to ‘strengthen alignment with updated NICE guidance’ as well as ‘enhance clinical outcomes, modernise the scheme and ensure indicators reflect current evidence and best practice’, according to Dr Doyle. The amendments include:
- two new obesity related indicators to support referrals into structured weight management
programmes and medicines optimisation. The Weight Management Enhanced service will be scrapped. - updating the childhood vaccination indicators to reflect the introduction of the MMRV vaccine.
- introducing a new diabetes indicator requiring delivery of all 8 NICE recommended processes
- updating the heart failure indicators to reflect the NICE recommended ‘4 pillars’ of treatment.
- combining and simplifying existing measures.
Dr Doyle said that new and updated specifications and guidance on the contract changes will be published ‘in the coming weeks’.
‘The improvements we are seeing in general practice are benefitting patients and we are extremely grateful for your ongoing work,’ she added.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘We’re giving practices the flexibility to hire more GPs, and backing them with extra funding to do so. As a result, many more patients with urgent needs will be able to get an appointment the day they contact their practice.’
BMA GPs committee chair Dr Katie Bramall said they expected the Government ‘to frame this GP contract as a major win for patient access’ but that ‘hard working family doctors will be deeply concerned about setting up even more unrealistic expectations of unlimited same‑day urgent care provision alongside potential barriers being put in place around specialist referrals, all while trying to keep practices open and prevent even more surgery closures’.
She added that the committee will examine all the contract changes when it meets later this week and ‘determine its next steps for the profession.’
This year for the first time the Government consulted with other bodies other than the BMA during the contract negotiations, including the Institute of General Practice Management.
What requirements are being added in to the core GP contract for 2026/27?
- Requests identified as clinically urgent, as determined by the practice must receive a same-day response. Where this doesn’t happen, practices must engage with ICB support.
- Practices must not ask patients to call back, or make contact, on another day. The existing ‘appropriate response’ requirement will be amended to provide greater flexibility for non-clinically urgent contacts. Practices will still need to provide patients with a timely appropriate response confirming next steps, but this will be required by the end of the next working day (rather than within the same core-hours period). This does not mean the patient’s non clinically urgent request must be fully dealt with by then; rather, the patient should understand how and when their issue will be managed.
- Practices mandated to share data to support the Lung Cancer Screening Programme, run by NHS England.
- Embedding the use of Advice and Guidance in the contract. Funding via the enhanced service will become part of core practice funding.
- Practices will have to submit data in five metrics and be encouraged to use this information to improve patient services. These are: call waiting times between 8am and 10 am; call waiting times during core hours; percentage of clinically urgent patients seen on the same day; percentage of ‘non-clinically urgent’ patients seen within one week; percentage of ‘non-clinically urgent’ patients seen within two weeks.
- Practices will also have to provide timely data and information related to online and video consultation services.
- No capping of online consultation requests.
- There will be mandated use of online patient registration.
- Practices to have a dedicated and monitored email address for receiving information from pharmacies, in case GP Connect is unavailable.
- Practices to reconfirm a patient’s nominated pharmacy when a new prescription is issued and ensure that referrals and triage tools used for pharmacy services offer a full choice of providers.
- Practices and PCNs have to participate in the General Practice Staff survey.
- Where there is ‘unwarranted’ variation in practice performance, including where there is a risk of a contractual breach, practices must engage with support from their ICB.
- Practices must display opening times for all modes of access ( walk-in, telephone and online consultation) on their website, in their premises and in leaflets.
Source: DHSC, NHS England
