New practice-level GP recruitment scheme will see £292m repurposed from PCN funding

Almost £300m will be made available to GP practices to recruit new GPs or increase GP sessions, the Government has announced. 

In a letter to GP practices in England, NHS England said it would ‘repurpose’ £292m from PCNs to fund ‘a new practice-level GP reimbursement scheme’. 

It will also open up the existing PCN-level ARRS scheme to experienced GPs, and not just those that are recently qualified.

Pulse also understands that GP practices looking to access the scheme that have a higher patient-to-GP ratio (more than 3,000) would first need to engage with their local ICB and explain their ratio.

The letter comes as part of the Government’s announcement of changes to the 2026/27 GP contract, with the full details of the contract set to be published today. 

NHS England’s national director for primary care Dr Amanda Doyle said: ‘We will introduce a new practice-level GP reimbursement scheme to enable practices to recruit new GPs or increase the number of sessions from GPs already working in the practice.  

‘We will repurpose £292m of funding currently allocated to the primary care network (PCN) level Capacity and Access Payment (CAP) for the scheme. The changes will support clinically urgent same day access in general practice.’ 

The £292m figure is roughly equal to the funding allocated for capacity payments in the 2025/26 GP contract.  

The Capacity and Access Payment (CASP and CAIP) will be removed from the Network Contract DES, the letter added. 

The BMA has previously asked the Government to introduce a ‘practice level funding scheme’ in place of the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS) to ‘support practices to hire more GPs’.

However, ARRS is addressed separately in the contract letter shared with GPs, with the Government announcing all GPs will now be eligible to be recruited using ARRS.

Dr Doyle said in the letter: ‘We will amend the rules for PCNs recruiting GPs via the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). The current restriction of use of ARRS funding to recruit recently qualified GPs will be removed. This will enable the recruitment of a wider range of GPs via the scheme.

‘In parallel, the maximum reimbursement that PCNs can claim for GPs employed via the ARRS will be increased to reflect that the recruited GPs will not only be those who have recently qualified.’

ARRS, which dedicates funding for PCNs to recruit for primary care roles, was extended only to newly-qualified GPs in October 2024 with a ring-fenced £82m uplift to the existing £1.4bn ARRS pot. 

Andy Pow, adviser to the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants, said the announcement may pose problems for PCNs who are currently using the CAP payment at scale, and now will need to ‘re-think’.

‘This may appear a good thing at a headline level by expanding the number of reimbursed GP roles. However, the reality is that practices are already using this funding at practice level in an unrestricted way. Ringfencing the money is going to cause problems for practices.’

He added: ‘The changes announced today are unlikely to resolve any of the uncertainty in general practice coming out of the 10-year plan, nor provide it with any substantial uplift in funding to develop services.’

Read all of our coverage of the 2026/27 contract here.