The national arrangements for providing vaccines are set out in the additional services section of the SFE (statement of financial entitlements).

Those vaccines that are provided as enhanced services will have their arrangements outlined in their respective service specifications.

UKHSA guidance on the national minimum standards and core curriculum for vaccination training

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) have recently updated their guidance on the national minimum standards and core curriculum for vaccination training. There is particular reference to maintaining public confidence in vaccination programmes with concerns that public awareness and confidence in vaccines may waver, and that key to countering this and maintaining high levels of engagement is the identification of ‘trust, advice, high level of knowledge and positive attitude’ as being ‘important determinants in achieving high vaccine uptake’.

UKHA’s guidance outlines the requirements for vaccinating staff (vaccinators), including the role non-registered healthcare professionals should play in the provision of vaccinations.  This clarification around the role of HCSWs may not be in line with existing interpretation and could potentially significantly impact upon the way in which practices design and deliver mass vaccinations programmes.

Read GPC England's guidance

Seasonal Influenza & Covid Vaccination programmes 2025/26

For 2026/27 NHS England has published a combined service specification for flu and covid vaccination programmes[ND1] .

This allows practices to provide covid vaccination directly, rather than via their PCN, for the first time, and makes a number of other changes to better align the two programmes.  Whilst it is a combined specification, practices will be able to only sign up for the flu element, if they do not wish to deliver Covid vaccination as well.

Other notable changes to the specification include:

• Item of service payments for autumn/winter 2026/27 COVID-19 vaccinations increase £8.70 per vaccine administered, Item of service payments for autumn/winter 2026/27 COVID-19 vaccinations increase £8.70 per vaccine administered. This is partly funded by the removal of the housebound additional payment.
• Locums can now only receive vaccination under the programme from a practice in which there are working, rather than where they are registered as a patient.
• Practices will be able to use GPIT to record COVID-19 vaccinations, and will no longer be required to use point-of-care systems or the Manage Your Service (MYS) system to claim for payments.

In line with the above it is highly recommended that practices read the specification in full before signing up, in order to ensure that they are aware of the full requirements.

Whilst practices may wish to co-administer flu vaccinations with COVID vaccinations (where the practice is signed up to the COVID vaccination programme and where co-administration is clinically appropriate) this is not a requirement.

As in previous years under the specification, practices can provided flu vaccinations to their patient facing staff.  Whilst they are not eligible to receive payment for these, they will be covered under the CNDGP for indemnity purpose.

GP locums are able to receive vaccination from their registered practice or current place of employment.

The specifications for the adult and childhood flu programmes, respectively, can be found below, alongside the 2026flu letter:

The annual flu letter for the 2025/26 flu programme

Changes to GMS vaccination programmes for 2025/26

Item of service (IoS) fees for routine childhood immunisations have been uplifted by £2 to £12.06.  This includes all childhood routine vaccinations set out within Table 1 of the SFE, plus Hepatitis B immunisations at birth/four weeks and 12 months and MMR for those 6 and over. 

The payments for all other vaccination remain the same. 

In addition to the changes to IoS fee for routine childhood vaccinations, there will also be the following changes in 25/26, in line with recommendations by The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisations:  

• two changes to the childhood vaccination schedule, necessitated by the discontinuation of the Menitorix (Hib/MenC) vaccine
• the exchange of MenB and PCV vaccines within the childhood schedule (from January 2026)
• a change to the adult shingles programme, reflecting new evidence on the effectiveness of the vaccination for a broader severely Immunosuppressed (SIS) cohorts 
• introduction of a varicella vaccine, with MMR replaced by MMRV (from January 2026)
• an amendment to the requirement to record the dried blood spot test for at risk babies, allowing that recording to take place between 12 and 18 months
• changes to the SFE to address inconsistencies in treatment of patients that move practice as set out in paragraphs 15-17 of annex F.

Routine childhood vaccinations

Adult routine immunisations

Other vaccination programmes