General Practice Resilience Programme - Londonwide LMCs' update

The 'General Practice Forward View' sets out a commitment to deliver a 'General Practice Resilience programme' over the next four years (2016-2020). The programme aims to deliver a menu of support to enable practices to become more resilient and better placed for the future.

Nationally, funding will be invested over the next four years; for London total funding for 2016/17 has been confirmed as £2.6million. Funding will be allocated based on Local Development Plans which are currently being produced by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), with a submission deadline of Friday 30 September 2016.

The offer of support is in order to make practices be more able to cope with the issues and challenges facing them and make them more resilient. The programme is in no way related to the performance management of contracts, and aims to provide packages of support to practices that will have a direct impact on their ability to deliver quality services.

National guidance indicates that the programme can be accessed on an individual practice basis. However, the approach in London is to encourage larger scale projects where groups of practices work together in order to deliver change/resilience on a larger footprint, focussing on working together to tackle common problems, implementing new models of care or to provide services at scale in order to improve resilience. We are awaiting written details regarding the process in London and we have asked that this be shared with practices and CCGs as a matter of urgency. It should be noted that NHSE's London approach has been implemented by NHSE London without consultation with Londonwide LMCs, and may not be consistent with the national scheme (details of the national offer can be found on the NHS England website).

The programme will offer practices the opportunity to access support to address specific issues, although support will be tailored according to the assessment of local needs, it will include:

Rapid intervention and management support for practices at risk of closure.
Diagnostic services to identify areas for improvement support.
Specialist advice and guidance, eg, HR, IT, Management, Finance.
Coaching/supervision/mentorship.
Practice management capacity support.
Coordinated support to help practices struggling with workforce issues.
Change management and improvement support to individual or groups of practices.

Although this is not an opportunity for individual practices to bid for funding, national guidance includes a clear expectation that plans should be based on local needs, including self-referral from practices requiring resilience support. The deadline for CCG plans was initially 30 September 2016, however nationally the deadline for final submission of plans has been extended to Friday 7 October 2016. This extension provides a welcome opportunity for practices, through their CCGs, to influence the final content of local plans and we would therefore urge you to:

Contact your CCG to obtain a copy of your local Resilience Plan.
Notify the CCG if either your own practice or local area has clear requirements in terms of ensuring your resilience.

Please do not hesitate to contact your LMC team if you require further information.

Last updated : 23 Feb 2017

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