The Government will increase the global sum by a total of 7.4% for 2024/25 in order to fund GP and practice staff pay rises worth 6%.
An internal BMA letter to GPC England members, sent yesterday and seen by Pulse, said that this ‘aggregate’ rise will incorporate the 2.7% global sum uplift already awarded in April as part of the contract imposition.
This means the new global sum payment per weighted patient will be £112.50, up from £104.73 in 2023/24, and NHS England has ‘committed to making payments within the September 2024 practice pay run’, according to the GPCE.
Last month, the Government accepted the recommendations of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB), confirming that there will be a 6% increase ‘to the salary scales, pay ranges and the pay element of contracts’ for GP partners, salaried GPs, and practice staff.
NHS England later said that the uplift to the global sum is calculated to cover all practice staff, and they therefore ‘firmly expect’ GP partners to award the full 6% pay rise to practice nurses, reception and management staff, as well as salaried GPs.
The GPCE’s letter emphasised that the DDRB only covers doctors and dentists, and that ‘staff pay is a matter for employers as Independent Contractors’, regardless of the Government’s ‘expectation’ for partners to honour the uplift.
It said, however, that partners ‘will want to reward staff’ during a ‘challenging time’ for general practice, and that many practice staff, and national organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing, ‘use the annual DDRB Award as a benchmark’.
NHS England confirmed last week that the global sum will rise ‘by at least 6%’ in order to fund GP pay rises.
However, the exact contract uplift required has until now been unclear while GPs awaited the outcome of negotiations between the BMA and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
On the global sum uplift, the GPCE’s letter said: ‘NHS England/DHSC have now finalised how the DDRB Award of 6% for Contractors will be implemented.
‘The aggregate rise in the 2024/25 GS (Global Sum) payment per weighted patient will be 7.4% (topping up the April 2024 2.7% GS uplift to reach this year’s DDRB Award). This results in a new GS payment per weighted patient of £112.50 – an increase of £7.77 compared to 2023/24.’
According to the letter, the out-of-hours deduction will remain at 4.75%, which in ‘absolute terms’ means it will change from £4.97 to £5.34 to align with the total 7.4% uplift.
On QOF, GPCE deputy chair Dr Julius Parker said: ‘The value of each QOF point increase relates to the Contractor Population Index; the average practice list size rose to 9,964 on 1/1/24 and the QOF point value in 2024/25 will therefore be £220.62 compared with £213.43 in 2023/24 (an increase of 3.4%).’
For salaried GPs, the BMA letter made clear that any GP on the standard model contract must receive the DDRB uplift in full.
If the contract does not contain an equivalent clause on annual pay increases, the letter said the union ‘encourages’ partners to pass on the full 6% pay rise, but recognised that ‘they are not required to do so’ under the contract.
The previous 2.7% uplift the global sum was awarded in April to account for a 2% pay rise for GPs and salaried staff, which was provisional ahead of the DDRB’s report.
GP leaders highlighted that if practices implemented this ‘interim salary uplift’, they should account for this within ‘any further uplift’.
Dr Parker said: ‘A 7.4% increase is above current inflation. However, it does not meet GPC England’s aim of an uplift that restores real-terms GP Contract income to 2018/19 levels, which we estimate would have required a 10.7% uplift – a reasonable objective given other recent Branch of Practice pay settlements in recent months.’
For Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) staff, who should receive the 5.5% uplift recommended for Agenda for Change pay scales, the GPCE suggested that this will ‘be an unfunded cost pressure for the overall PCN ARRS budget’.
In a separate statement, Dr Parker said that the ‘formula’ the Government uses to increase investment into general practice ‘allocates funding per patient for each individual practice, and is based on criteria like the age and sex of patients and where the practice is located’.
He continued: ‘Instead, staff costs should reflect the diverse skill-mix needed to deliver the full range of patient care within each individual practice.
‘Partners will want to reward all their staff for their dedication and commitment, but while some practices may receive enough to pass on a full 6% salary uplift, others won’t, forcing them to make difficult choices about what they can and can’t afford to give hardworking staff.’
According to Dr Parker, the GPCE has ‘raised this repeatedly’ with both NHS England and DHSC, as GPs have ‘been expected to do more with less’ for years.
‘This is why, when the new national GP contract is negotiated – which we want to see done in this Parliament – we must review the formulas used to allocate DDRB uplifts,’ he added.
A spokesperson for DHSC said: ‘The government is accepting the DDRB’s pay recommendation of 6% uplift to pay. We are consulting on the implementation of DDRB for GPs and will announce further detail in due course.’
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