Confirmation of increased 2024/25 contractor pay and staffing expenses funding uplift

The Government has accepted the DDRB’s recommendation to uplift contractor/partner income and the salaried GP pay range by 6% for this financial year.

Updated: Tuesday 15 October 2024
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The Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body (DDRB) has recommended a 6% increase to salary scales, pay ranges and the pay element of contracts from 1st April 2024. NHSE will therefore uplift the contractor income and other staff expenses elements of national practice contract baseline funding by an additional 4%.

This is in addition to the 2% already added to those two elements of the practice contract funding baseline in April 2024, meaning those national funding elements will have received a total 6% uplift in 2024/25 for ‘contractor income’ and ‘other staff expenses’.

The GP contract is notionally broken down into three elements: GP contractor income, other staff expenses and other expenses. Staffing expenses currently represent 50% of the national practice contract funding baseline – ‘Global Sum’, i.e. before it is distributed to practices, and this is determined using average self-employed GP partner ‘employee expenses’ from the 2021/22 GP earnings and expenses national dataset.

As with last year, NHS England has confirmed that the uplift covers on-costs (national insurance, pension contributions and other staff benefits).

This additional 4% of funding will be distributed via the Global Sum (payment per weighted patient), and this translates into an increase of 7.4% for 2024/25 compared with 2023/24. NHS England has confirmed this uplift will be backdated to April 2024 in the September pay run. The GPC England and the Sessional GP Committee encourage all practices to pass it on to all their salaried practice staff where they can afford to.

Read GPCE’s Focus on the 2024-25 DDRB pay award for more details on the funding mechanisms and calculations.

Note that salaried GPs who are on the BMA model salaried GP contract have an entitlement to the full annual DDRB pay uplift award, so it must therefore be paid by employing practices. Those who are not should always be offered terms ‘no less favourable’ than the BMA model salaried GP contract, as per the published GMS (general medical services) and PMS (personal medical services) contracts.

Global sum payment per weighted registered patient

2023/24 – £104.73
Original 2024/25 - £107.57
Uplifted 2023/24 - £112.50

SFE reimbursements for locum GP cover

NHS England has agreed a 6% increase in SFE (Statement of Financial Entitlements) reimbursements for 2024/25. An uplift to these payments, after five years without one, was part of GPC England’s negotiating strategy for 2024/25 and is an encouraging decision. These uplifted payments are backdated to 1st April 2024.

This means that practices are entitled to the uplift for any payments under these SFE reimbursement arrangements made since 1st April 2024.

Trainers’ grant

The Trainers’ Grant, which did not form part of the DDRB recommendations this year, has been uplifted  by 6% via the GP Educator pay scale for 2024/25 from 1st April 2024.

GP appraiser fees

GPC England requested that the fee GP appraisers receive, which were removed from the DDRB remit last year (2023/24), is also uplifted by 6%. This was rejected by NHS England.

NHSE Fellowships

A 6% uplift will be applied to all NHSE fellowships for 2024/25, i.e. general practice recruitment and retention programmes.

 

Dispensing fee scale

NHSE will uplift the profit element of the dispensing fee scale in response to the DDRB’s 2024/25 recommendation in October 2024. It is a blended calculation based on the relevant proportions of GP contractor income and staffing expenses.

The profit element is only part of the methodology, so the fee scale fell overall in 2023/24 because of an overspend the previous year. Work was undertaken in 2023/24 to try to prevent fee scale swings being so pronounced in future.

Should you have any queries, please email [email protected].