NHS England has told GP partners it ‘firmly expects’ them to use the promised increase in the GP contract to award a 6% pay rise to all practice staff in full.
A letter was sent to surgeries on Friday following the announcement that the Government had accepted the recommendation of a 6% pay uplift for GPs and their staff in England made by the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration Review Body.
The letter reiterates that the GP contract will be amended to increase the pay elements of the contract by 6% – consisting of a further 4% in addition to the 2% already included in contract funding at the start of 2024/25 – and will be backdated to 1 April 2024.
The uplift will be passed on to practices via the global sum, it explained.
However, the letter signed by NHS England’s Dr Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and Dr Claire Fuller, national medical director for primary care, also makes clear that the funding increase should be used for the benefit of all staff.
‘The uplift to the global sum is calculated to cover all practice staff – not just GP partners and salaried GPs’, it said.
‘This includes practice nurses, reception, management and other practice staff. We firmly expect GP partners to honour the intent of this uplift and award the full 6% pay rises to all their staff.’
The timing of when practices can expect the new payments has not been finalised but will be ‘as soon as possible’ after details have been worked through and the Statement of Financial Entitlement updated, NHS England said.
Last week, the BMA’s GP Committee England (GPCE) warned that the uplift is ‘not enough to address the erosion’ of general practice funding.
Tony Brown, a former practice manager and now chief operating officer at North Shields PCN Collaboration, has also said that these pay rises are not affordable without more investment and that the position practices now find themselves in could lead to loss of staff.
‘We are likely to lose many skilled people to roles covered by Agenda For Change and these are very worrying times for our patients,’ he said. ‘I wish we had the finance and support from NHS England that our patients deserve.’
Last year when a similar pay increase was promised by the Government to general practice staff, the extra central funds provided didn’t go far enough to make full pay awards possible at many practices.
Meanwhile, the NHS England letter also set out more detail about the Government’s decision to temporarily add GPs to ARRS this year as an ’emergency measure’.
Extra funds of £82m will be added to the ARRS pot for 2024/25, which will be available to PCNs from October.
The new funding will be ring-fenced to fund the employment of more than 1,000 GPs who have recently obtained their certificate of completion of training (CCT), NHS England explained.
The exact criteria for employing GPs will be set out in a revised Network Contract DES specification, which is being worked on and that will include ensuring that ‘the GPs employed are in addition to the existing GP workforce employed by practices’. Revisions will be consulted on with the GPCE ‘over the coming weeks’, it added.
NHS England said since the new additional money is ‘complementary to the existing scheme’, the reimbursement of existing ARRS staff won’t be affected.
The letter also went to state: ’This move has been made to expedite the employment of some newly qualified GPs, who may be struggling to secure a practice role. We recognise the ARRS has not previously been used to fund GP employment. We will engage with the profession and stakeholders to review this approach as we look to identify longer-term solutions to GP employment and general practice sustainability – including core GP capacity – as part of the future contract reform discussions.’
In addition, NHS England said it recognised there have been calls for ARRS to be expanded to include practice nurses and it will keep the scheme ‘under review’.
