The BMA and Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are jointly calling on GP partners and practices to deliver 2025/26 pay rises due to nurses and other staff this September.
In a joint statement issued this week, the unions said they would like to see the 4% pay uplifts, promised by the Government to all salaried general practice staff, passed on ‘without unnecessary delay’, and backdated to April.
It’s key, they said, to ensuring ‘general practice is an attractive profession for healthcare staff’.
An uplift to the global sum for 2025/26 has been applied to fund staff pay increases, which NHS England said would show up in practice’s August payment run. The new amount of £123.34 per patient will be backdated to 1 April.
Now the BMA GP Committee (GPC) and RCN have said they ‘are united in calling on all GP partners to ensure where funds are received’, staff pay rises are ‘delivered in the September payroll, backdated to April’.
They added: ‘We would like to see pay uplifts passed on without unnecessary delay. We expect general practice contractors to implement pay rises to other practice staff in line with the uplift in funding they are receiving’.
The two bodies acknowledged that in previous years many general practice nursing staff have not received full pay increases as GP practices hadn’t received sufficient funds to pass on.
‘This cannot continue if we are to improve retention and ensure general practice is an attractive profession for healthcare staff’, they said.
Surveys carried out by Management in Practice have backed this up. In autumn 2024, a joint poll conducted with our sister title Nursing in Practice found that 50% of general practice nursing staff across the UK had reported still not having received a pay rise for the 2024/25 financial year. Of those that had received a pay award, only 16% were given the 6% recommended by the Government in England.
In addition, a separate survey also carried out in autumn 2024 showed that 10% of practice managers reported having no pay rise for 2024/25, while 34% reported receiving an uplift below the recommended 6%.
For admin staff, 4% had said they hadn’t received a rise for 2024/25 and 23% said they been given an uplift below 6%.
The BMA’s GPC and RCN have said they are committed to jointly addressing ‘the systemic underfunding of general practice.’
They are seeking ring-fenced funding reimbursements at practice-level in a bid to ‘secure real change and improved terms and conditions aligned to Agenda for Change for GP nurses,’ they added.
The Institute of General Practice Management (IGPM) welcomed the commitment of the RCN and GPC to ensure staff across the sector are valued and rewarded but warned that without ‘a properly costed funded GP contract’, practices’ ability to pass on uplifts in pay awards remained constrained.
Its directors said: ‘We see first-hand the dedication of nursing and wider practice teams, and we support the principle that pay uplifts should reach all staff where funding has been made available. However, as the organisations representing the operational leaders and employers of general practice staff, we must highlight the reality that funding uplifts in recent years have not always matched the true cost pressures borne by practices.’
They added that for most practices the Government’s increase to the global sum is insufficient to fully fund a 4% rise for all employed staff.
‘Alongside this, practices continue to face rising costs in other areas: pensions, national Insurance, estates, utilities, indemnity, CQC compliance, IT, and inflationary pressures on day to day running costs. These costs are not separately funded but fall directly on practice budgets.’
The IGPM said it wanted to see ring-fenced, recurrent funding that fully covers staff pay uplifts, employer contributions, and on-costs; parity of esteem between general practice staff and colleagues in other parts of the NHS; and sustainable investment in core general practice, not just ARRS roles.
It also called for practice managers to be included in funding discussions between the BMA and RCN.
‘Only by involving the full general practice leadership team – GPs, nurses, and practice management – can we develop a funding model that secures the future workforce and delivers the best care for patients,’ the directors said.
For more data on general practice nurse pay, see our 2025 salary survey report here.
