We will unite to improve pay, pensions, terms and conditions for all doctors and ensure excellent training and financial support is available for all medical students

Our biggest strength is in our numbers. To represent the profession and win, we need to encourage as many medical students and doctors as possible into membership of the BMA. We intend to do this by increasing our visibility, activity and organisation at both a local and national level. We will use our increased leverage in collective bargaining, improving outcomes on pay, medical training, student finance, pensions and terms and conditions for all members.

We will train and empower members to represent themselves and their colleagues, ensuring delivery of a safe and inclusive workplace environment, with expert staff support and leadership for complex cases

We will further invest in growing our membership by equipping local representatives with basic and advanced skills in representation and negotiation, leading to improved bargaining outcomes for members. 

We recognise that member to member support and engagement is the strongest tool for recruitment and retention. We intend to build a sustainable BMA by increasing both the ability of members to take local collective action and the proportion of non-complex queries that can 
be managed by local representatives.

We will continue to provide expert support for complex individual and collective cases via our BMA staff colleagues across the UK. We will target our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work to achieve measurable improvements in the workplace environment. We will improve our root cause analysis of the issues facing the profession, strengthening our ability to address issues as they arise at a collective, rather than individual, level. We will focus our legal efforts on cases that benefit the profession as a whole.

We will enable member involvement in campaigns on professional and wider societal issues, determined democratically

We recognise that BMA members are more than the terms of their employment and want to use their collective power for other key professional priorities. We will ensure that members can become involved in nationally coordinated campaigns on topics such as training, regulation, the NHS and the structure of healthcare, public health or wider societal issues we can influence via member activity, such as climate change.

Members’ views will determine the campaign priorities of the association

We will proactively campaign on a limited number of priority areas to ensure maximum impact; introducing a new approach to planning, managing and reporting on our policy work. We will design a priority setting framework to enable us to focus on areas where we can have the most impact as a trade union and professional association.

Priority confirmation will take place democratically on an annual basis and seek to focus on issues that directly impact the profession and/or patients and where members can genuinely influence the outcome; demonstrating clear progress and success against the original stated policy aims.

To have the most impact, we will need to shift from a traditional model of influencing to a more agile and proactive approach at both a national and local level; one that maximises working with partners where they are better placed to coordinate or lead the debate to gain the best outcome.

Our expert advice and guidance will support doctors to win policy changes that benefit doctors, medical students, patients and populations; to shape the future of the profession; and help with the ethical challenges they face

We will use specialist and expert staff to support campaigning work. We will continue to play an influential role in forming government and public opinion about public health issues for the benefit of doctors, patients and society. 

We will support members from the first day at medical school through to retirement with the ethical challenges they will face as a doctor. We will outline the latest good practice and legal principles to help inform decision making and we will campaign for necessary improvements in legislation in line with member views.

We will unite and amplify the voice of the profession, engaging our members to understand what matters to doctors across the UK, and play our part as a credible voice for a healthy world

We represent all members of the profession from medical student through to retirement, those that are employees and employers, those that work for the NHS, in community settings, academia, public health, private practice and in service, and across all four nations of the UK. It is essential that we understand all views and amplify a collective and coherent voice. To do this, we will seek to engage the broader membership in our policy making processes from the outset.

We will strive to deliver an inclusive environment for members and staff

We are committed to creating a culture that is inclusive for everyone. We want to attract and retain members and staff who reflect our membership. Members and staff have agreed a new set of values that we will all work to embed from 2025 onwards (see page 10).

We will continue to refresh and update all policies that relate to members and staff respectively, to ensure they support and embed positive working practices. To improve our support for members, we will continue to implement the recommendations of the review by Ms Omambala KC.

We will align our resources and create a digital roadmap to underpin the delivery of our strategy 

We will ensure that our resources are allocated in a way that promotes collaboration, reacts to member demand and reduces silo working. Resources will be directly attributed to aid strategic delivery in a clear and transparent manner, that makes sense to both members and staff. 

We will enhance member experience through digital self-service. This will provide members with more autonomy when engaging with our website, seeking representation, joining us, updating their details and their communication preferences.

We will ensure that we remain financially viable and continue to work towards our sustainability aims

We will deliver and embed the final (rebuild and resilience) stages of our recovery programme ensuring that we can continue to support our members now and, in the future, shifting the financial dial from ‘saving to survive’ to investing for our members. This includes effective management of our estate and investments, maximising their return for the association. We will also continue to reduce our environmental impact through constant re-evaluation of our practices to reduce our carbon footprint further and deliver our responsible investment aims.