Fewer than one third of GP partners able to give themselves promised 6% pay rise

Fewer than one third of the UK’s GP partners have been able to give themselves the 6% pay rise recommended this year by the independent review body, Pulse can reveal. 

An exclusive survey, carried out by Pulse and our sister title Management in Practice, indicated that partners are forgoing their own pay rises this year in order to pass on increases to their staff.

The figures showed that across the UK, only 32% of GP partners said they received the full 6% pay rise or above, while almost half said they awarded themselves no pay uplift at all for 2024/25.

But the survey – which reached over 700 GP partners from different practices across the UK – suggested that a far larger proportion of practice staff received the full 6% uplift, including salaried GPs (74%), nursing (66%) and admin staff (59%).

The responses only from English GP partners revealed similar results, with over two thirds (68%) of respondents saying they awarded themselves an uplift below the recommended 6% or no uplift at all this year.

In July, the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) recommended a ‘6% increase to the salary scales, pay ranges and the pay element of contracts’ for both ‘contractor’ GPs and ‘salaried GP pay ranges’ in all UK nations.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) later confirmed that it would fund this recommendation – with an expectation that it would cover other salaried practice staff as well as GPs – via a 7.4% uplift to the global sum for English GP practices.

This is the first time the DDRB has made a recommendation on GP partner pay in five years, and the review body’s report said GP partners cited ‘significant’ cost pressures over the last two years. 

However, Pulse’s survey, carried out between mid-September and mid-October, suggested that many will not see an uplift this year, with a quarter of respondents saying they ‘only gave the full recommended pay rise to some staffing groups’ due to ‘cost pressures’.

Funding arrangements in the other UK nations have been less clear, with Scottish GPs only recently receiving confirmation that the global sum will be uplifted to fund the DDRB recommendation, while the Welsh Government has accepted the recommendation but funding depends on delayed contract negotiations with the BMA.

Meanwhile, the BMA in Northern Ireland has been told by the Government that it is ‘not in a position to make the full pay award’.

Over 40% of GP partner respondents from the devolved nations responded ‘don’t know’ to Pulse’s survey question on partner pay rises. 

Has your practice awarded staff the recommended pay increase of 6% for 2024/25? (UK-wide responses)

When analysing results from this survey, ‘don’t know/ not applicable’ responses were removed. 

Norfolk GP partner Dr Caroline Delves said her practice prioritised pay uplifts for salaried staff as it ‘seemed appropriate for the people with the lowest pay to get the biggest uplift’, but she said they included ‘on costs’ meaning it worked out at a 4.1% pay rise rather than the full 6%. 

For partners, she said they had hoped to have ‘some money left over’, but that the recent Budget announcements on National Living Wage and National Insurance hikes ‘completely put paid to that’.

Dr Delves told Pulse that they expect the Budget changes to cost an extra £95,000 next year, which means the partners will not take extra drawings this year.

‘We don’t have £95,000 spare just sitting in our accounts, so there’s no point us taking extra drawings till April, because we’ll just have to pay it all back in.’ 

She also said the funding for the DDRB uplift this year was insufficient as the calculations for staffing costs are ‘not in keeping with what actual staffing costs are’. 

‘We haven’t had an uplift for years for partners, and we did feel it was important that we have some uplift, given that it was specifically supposed to be a 6% uplift for us, but the numbers just didn’t add up,’ she said. 

Dr Jane Hargest, a GP partner in Warwickshire, said her practice was able to award the full pay uplift to partners this year, but that next year might be more difficult. 

She told Pulse: ‘We were lucky that our income improved last year as we didn’t need to use locums at all. This year our projected income is already £50,000 less as we won’t have the Covid “bonus” of the previous couple of years.

‘And then another £65,000 less for NI increase and increased wages for reception/admin staff which are tagged to minimum wage (starting at a set percentage higher). 

‘So partners’ income is estimated to be lower than before Covid.’

Dr Hargest said her practice ‘can’t afford to lose good staff’ and so ‘they will always get the pay increase even at the cost of partner income’.

Derbyshire GP partner Dr Kathryn Lucas said her practice awarded the 6% pay rise ‘to all staff except the partners’ and that currently they do not know what their income will be as it is ‘extremely difficult to predict’. 

She told Pulse: ‘At present, due to the way funding works in general practice, we have no idea whether as partners we will get any uplift, or whether we may find we actually have a reduction in income.’

In response to Pulse’s survey findings, the BMA said that ‘sadly, this is the reality for those on the front lines’. 

GP Committee England chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said: ‘GP practices are small businesses that are fully committed to the NHS, meaning they cannot adjust their prices to offset rising costs, leaving GPs in a position where they must choose between yet another a pay freeze or restricting staff and services or both to avoid closing their practice doors.’

She also said practices are ‘caught between a rock and a hard space’ as they are not entitled to certain protections afforded to public entities, but they do not ‘have the flexibility of private businesses to raise prices’. 

‘If the Government provides some funding with one hand, only to take away more with the other, what realistic options does a small business have to remain sustainable?’ Dr Bramall-Stainer added.

Pulse has approached NHS England and the DHSC for comment. 

This survey was run with our sister title Management in Practice and was open between 19 September and 18 October 2024, collating responses using the SurveyMonkey tool. After removing duplicate entries from the same practice, a total of 722 GP partners from across the UK responded to questions on the 2024/25 pay award. The survey was advertised to our readers via our website and email newsletter, with a prize draw for a £200 John Lewis voucher as an incentive to complete the survey. The survey was unweighted, and we do not claim this to be scientific – only a snapshot of the GP population.