Andy Pow

“So it would appear NHS England is replacing recurrent core funding with a one-off winter scheme that requires more work.”

“The £190m investment in winter pressures is limited and a drop in the ocean compared with the overall NHS budget. Any significant investment in GP practices or neighbourhood health will have to come from within existing budgets.”

“Comparing all qualified GPs to consultants doesn't seem quite right”

“below inflation”

“tip of the iceberg”

“As ever care needs to be taken with the figures as they are based on HMRC data which won't solely reflect NHS practice income. Increasingly GPs are spending time on work away from the practice as part of portfolio careers.”

“If you took that away from core general practice, or took away the certainty of getting the money from practices, then core general practice is not going to be sustainable in its current form.”

“An individual GP practice isn't going to know if someone's moved away. Lots of people don't see their GP for a fair while - but that doesn't necessarily mean they are no longer a resident”

“If you have used more of your ARRS allocation to employ GPs and you're offering them a 3.5% uplift, you're going to be short - so you're going to have to raid it from the rest of your budget.”

“There is big variation across the country - in some areas it's very high and in other areas ridiculously low.”

“The reality is that practices are already using this funding at practice level in an unrestricted way. Ringfencing the money is going to cause problems for practices.”

“Now you have got to use it on additional GPs. But what if you had used that money to employ pharmacists/salaried GPs/advanced nurse practitioners already to deal with same-day access requirements? You now have to employ more [GPs] - more cost, no additional income.”

“This may appear a good thing at a headline level by expanding the number of reimbursed GP roles. However, the reality is that practices are already using this funding at practice level in an unrestricted way. Ringfencing the money is going to cause problems for practices.”

“The SNP contract is going to overlap with PCNs and you can't see, long-term, PCNs and SNP contracts co-existing. What is needed now in the short term is clarity over what is going to happen with PCNs and and SNPs.”

“The good news for GPs is that no changes to the pension tax regime were announced in the budget, which could have impacted GPs both individually and as employers. In addition the threatened new national insurance rules for partners did not materialise.”