Practices will need help – and reductions in red tape – to release capacity for the massive vaccine booster campaign announced by the government, GP leaders have warned.

Practices are being offered significantly increased payments for undertaking COVID vaccine campaigns – with payments for every dose delivered on a Sunday reaching £20 and £30 for housebound patient vaccination. The basic payment for vaccination will increase to £15 a patient, NHS England announced last night.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he intended to “throw everything” at the campaign to ensure all adults are offered a booster dose by the end of January and the population has the maximum protection against the omicron variant. He said vaccination centres would “pop up like Christmas trees.”

Practice leaders said they would need suspension of red tape and other measures to release staff for the programme. Royal College of GPs vice-chair Dr Gary Howsam said: “Today’s announcements will involve a significant expansion of the COVID vaccination programme, both in terms of volume and complexity, so it’s crucial that GPs and their teams that are involved receive clear and urgent communication as to how these developments will impact this vital work.

“GPs and our teams have played a leading role in the COVID vaccination programme since its inception, and more than a thousand GP-led sites across the country are still vaccinating on top of other vital work, including delivering care to more than a million patients a day and the flu vaccination programme. General practice is highly experienced in delivering effective vaccination campaigns on a mass-scale, but further involvement in the booster campaign will require sufficient resourcing, particularly in terms of staff, and support to manage escalating workload – including the suspension of bureaucratic demands, such as QOF – as we approach what is looking like an incredibly tough winter.”

Dr Farah Jameel, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “At present, practices physically don’t have the staff or spare capacity to manage the additional numbers of patients expected to come forward for boosters alongside all the non-COVID care and assessments their contracts have bound them to do, so the funding, whilst welcome, will do little to help alleviate current pressures. With a finite number of staff and hours in the day there is a limit to what practices can achieve and the Government and NHS England needs to be honest with the public about this.

“If the Government and NHS England/Improvement wants more practices to get involved again with vaccinations, as many will want to do at such a critical time, they need to be freed from bureaucracy and lower-priority, centrally imposed targets – releasing time and staff so practice teams can get jabs into arms as quickly as possible.”