GP leaders have reacted in anger after it emerged that money intended for primary care has been withheld from front line services.

The underspends are so persistent that this year the Department of Health has pulled back some £120 million worth of funding from general practice, it has been revealed. The cash will be used to prop up NHS England’s reserves and, indirectly, to support struggling hospitals.

Last year NHS England reported an underspend of £200 million on primary care budgets, the Health Service Journal reported.

NHS England chief financial officer Paul Baumann has written to Clinical Commissioning Groups, stating: “We fully recognise the challenges CCGs are facing in 2017-18, and we want to assure you that the decision to utilise a windfall benefit which would have made these challenges easier to manage has not been taken lightly.

“However, ignoring the need to secure the required commissioner contribution to the system risk reserve in a year when this may well again prove vital is simply not an option.”

NHS England says the money represents savings achieved on prescription costs through a reduction in prices of drugs.

But the Royal College of GPs said the news was “incredibly frustrating.”

Chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said: “GPs and our teams – who make the vast majority of NHS patient contacts – are dealing with a workload that has risen 16% over the last seven years, with a decline in resources over the last decade and a workforce that has not risen at the same pace.

“To channel resources elsewhere just exacerbates the problem.

“We need money earmarked for general practice spent on general practice, and we need the pledges in NHS England’s GP Forward View – including £2.4bn extra a year for general practice, and 5,000 more GPs – delivered in full and as a matter of urgency.”

And Dr Gavin Ralston, from the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “In this toxic environment, it is unacceptable that important resources are not being spent where they are needed – namely to develop and transform GP services, where 95 per cent of consultations within the NHS take place.”

An NHS England spokesman told the journal: “Given the financial pressures faced across the NHS, this one-off repayment of the higher than expected profits made by pharmacy businesses in previous years is going to be held in reserve.”