NHS England’s plan for general practice reveals it has no plan whatsoever

Pulse editor Sofia Lind on NHS England’s oversight regarding general practice in its planning guidance for 2025/26

With all the talk of neighbourhood health teams, shifting funding to the community, and focusing on prevention rather than cure, you’d be forgiven for thinking that NHS England’s planning guidance for the coming year may have a bit of a focus on general practice.

Well, you’d be wrong. The document setting out priorities for 2025/26 has, as far as the naked eye can see, not a single substantial plan for moving the focus to GP practices, beyond a vague notion of improving access for patients.

The rest – which sadly fails to surprise me one bit – is still focused on fitting the square peg of improving hospital performance while spending less money.

There’s even a special separate document notionally to set out a plan for the promised shift to a neighbourhood health service. But aside from some expectations on GP practices’ use of the NHS app, it has not a single further detail on what this flowery concept should entail.

Ironically, when put on the spot by MPs yesterday about the lack of detail in the plans as to how this shift in focus would materialise, NHS England chief Amanda Pritchard had the nerve to point to the imminent publication of these very documents.

But MPs were seemingly not swayed by this, as they promptly put out a press release stating their frustration.

Last Thursday I myself had a much less frustrating experience in the House of Commons. I attended the launch of Pulse publisher Cogora’s workforce white paper. If you have a moment to take out of your busy day to read some suggestions for what should happen in 2025/26, I highly recommend you spend it reading this instead of NHS England’s masterpiece.

And if you don’t have time for the full report, do glance at our dedicated series with investigations and news findings from the white paper, focusing specifically on the GP recruitment and unemployment crisis.

Accolades must go to my predecessor in the Pulse editor role, Jaimie Kaffash, for getting this important publication off the ground, at the same time as losing his father in the last month. And if you missed his ode to the NHS carers involved last week, do give that a read as well.

But NHS England’s planning guidance for 2025/26 you can safely give a miss.

Sofia Lind is editor of Pulse. Find her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn