GP contract deal for 2025/26 sees rise to global sum by almost £800m

A 7.2% rise in GP contract funding has been announced today as part of an agreed deal hailed by the BMA as ‘the first step on the road to recovery’ for general practice in England.

The agreement – the first in four years – sees almost £800m invested into the global sum; the axing of 32 QOF indicators; an increase to the Item of Service (IoS) fee for routine childhood vaccinations; and GPs and practice nurses permanently added to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS).

In addition to the core contract, there is also a rise in PCN funding via the Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service, taking the overall increase into general practice to £889m and the value of the total estimated contract value to £13,176m in 2025/26. 

Meanwhile, another separate pot of money, £80m is being made available to practices that take part in a new enhanced service for advice and guidance requests. This supports the Government’s commitment to move more care from secondary care into community settings, NHS England said. 

The increase to the global sum assumes an increase in salaries of 2.8% in 20205/26 and aims to help cover rising costs – including for staff, premises expenses and patient list growth. However NHS England has said a further uplift may be made following the Government’s response to the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Pay Review Body (DDRB) outcomes for 2025/26.

Among concessions from the BMA, all GP practices will be subject to a new requirement from 1 October to keep their online consultation tool open to patients for the duration of core hours (8.00am-6.30pm) for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests.

Practices will also be required to identify patients with the greatest need that should see the same GP at every appointment.

The BMA’s GP Committee England (GPCE) said it has agreed to the deal provided the Government commits to renegotiating a completely new national contract within this Parliament. The GPCE has stipulated this commitment must be confirmed in writing by mid March 2025, it said.

GPCE chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said: ‘This agreed uplift to our annual contract sees the first step on the road to recovery of rebuilding general practice across England. However, GPCE has been clear, we have shown that we want to work in good faith with this Government and build on this new beginning – what we now need is certainty about our collective future.

‘We know the Treasury will be announcing its funding plans for this Parliament and its 10-year plan for the NHS later this spring, and we need to see a new substantive GP practice contract for England in the upcoming comprehensive spending review. This is how Government can put its words into action and bring back the family doctor, fix the front door of the NHS, and shift resource from a hospital focus towards care closer to home within the community at your local surgery’.  

She added: ‘Of course, a single set of changes won’t reverse over a decade’s starvation of general practice, but it’s within the Government’s gift to deliver on a new contract that will secure the longer-term future of general practice.’

In a letter to sent to practices and PCNs today outlining the new deal, Dr Amanda Doyle, NHS England primary care director, said the changes to the GP contract for 2025/26 ‘mark a major step forward in the Government’s mission to shift care into the community, to focus on prevention and to move from analogue to digital’.

She added that the cash growth represented ‘the biggest increase in investment into general practice in over a decade with general practice contract funding growing at a faster rate than NHS funding as a whole’.

The Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants (AISMA) said practices in England will be relieved to hear that funds will be available to cover staff cost uplifts from 1 April 2025 and will welcome the sizeable increase in the global sum.

Andy Pow, adviser to the board of the AISMA warned, however, that ‘the devil will be in the detailed announcements to come and, since the majority of the extra money is going into the global sum, there will be the usual winners and losers among practices’.

He added that there also needed to clarification on how the funding to cover National Insurance cost increases will work for primary care networks (PCNs).

‘Practices and PCNs need to plan their finances for the year ahead as a matter of urgency, so the full funding announcement can’t come soon enough.

‘Governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales need to act fast to address the wage cost issues for the practices in their countries,’ he also said.