GP leaders and NHS England are engaged in a nationwide battle over a 1% pay increase for practices, it has emerged.
The British Medical Association says that practices were promised the 1% once the new GP contract was agreed. It has now written to Clinical Commissioning Groups asking them to provide the funding to practices, backdating it to last April.
However, NHS England is advising CCGs not to agree to the request.
In a letter tabled to the CCG in Sunderland, BMA GP committee chair Dr Richard Vautrey said: “I am sure you share my concern about the recruitment and retention crisis that is not only impacting GPs, but also their practice staff.
“The difference in pay awards between staff on Agenda for Change and the GP practice workforce, who are increasingly working alongside one another, will undermine morale in your practices and make staff recruitment and retention worse.”
It added: “As a CCG you will have committed to fund the agreed uplift for all staff on the Agenda for Change contract and I therefore hope you can see how important it is to do the same for all staff working in GP practices. The GPs and practice staff in your area deserve nothing less.”
The CCG was then told that the NHS England advised that the 1% remained “conditional on contract arrangements” for the coming financial year.
Its chief finance officer David Chandler told the Newcastle Chronicle: “Every practice received a 4.2% funding increase for 2018/19, with further new funding expected over the next five years through the NHS Long Term Plan.
“The BMA has written to every CCG in the country asking them to pay practices a further 1%, backdated to last April, but we were advised by NHS England not to pay this, and do not feel able to prioritise this ahead of the many other demands on local NHS funding.”
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