GP leaders have queried the impact on services of an ambitious plan to create community weight loss clinics so thousands of obese people can get access to powerful new drugs.

The Government is to spend £40 million on a pilot scheme that will improve access to the new drugs by creating community clinics as well as hospital-based specialist clinics. It sees the project as key to reducing ill health.

GP leaders expect that primary care networks will be used to create these clinics – with GPs expected to write prescriptions. Clinics must ensure that patients are taking other steps to improve their fitness and changing dietary habits to ensure that weight loss is maintaining.

Royal College of GPs chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: “Shifting some of this care safely into primary care is worth exploring as it makes sense for patients to access care within the community, where safe and appropriate, but this would need to be matched with sufficient resource and funding to account for the increased workload. Any plans to expand availability of Semaglutide in primary care must also be done based on evidence of long-term benefit to patients – and sufficient availability of the drug must be ensured ahead of any roll out, so as not to raise patients’ expectations, as there may be a significant number of people who would benefit from it. It will be interesting to see the results of this pilot, and we look forward to it being robustly evaluated, taking the above points into account, before it is rolled out more widely, and as strategies to tackle obesity are developed.”

Professor David Strain, chair of the British Medical Association board of science, said: “Given the significant pressures that general practice is under, it is crucial that when the scheme is rolled out more widely, primary care is in a position to be able to deliver it in a way that is sustainable. The Government must ensure that general practice has the right resources to support an intervention that, although will improve the quality of lives of thousands of people in the long term, will take a considerable time to realise the benefits on the health service. It is also essential that this funding does not come at the expense of upstream preventative strategies, such as delivering on the long-delayed existing policy commitments around junk food advertising on pre-watershed TV and online. The Government must create the opportunities for everyone, particularly our children, to be able to eat healthily and have access to open spaces for recreation.”

Professor Ramesh Arasaradnam, academic vice president of the Royal College of Physicians, welcomed the plan, adding: “The involvement of the Royal Colleges and other organisations will be key to the success of the pilot. These drugs must be provided in a way that reduces health inequalities, protects patient safety and helps to reduce the pressure on an already overstretched workforce.”

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Obesity costs the NHS around £6.5 billion a year and is the second biggest cause of cancer. Tackling obesity will help to reduce pressure on the NHS and cut waiting times, one of the government’s five priorities, and this pilot will help people live longer, healthier lives.”