‘No additional funding’ for 2026/27 GP pay uplifts, Streeting tells DDRB

There will be ‘no additional funding’ for pay increases for doctors in the next financial year, the health secretary has told the independent pay review body.

Wes Streeting wrote to the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) yesterday to formally commence the annual pay review.

He asked the new chair of the DDRB Mark Hoble to start the process earlier than usual to allow the review body ‘to give due consideration to the relevant evidence’ and to return to ‘more timely annual pay processes’.

Last year the DDRB was also asked to deliver its recommendation ‘at the earliest point’ to help speed up pay awards for the current financial year. This time around, the health secretary wants the decision even earlier.

Mr Streeting said: ‘I would be grateful if you could support an earlier pay announcement by submitting your report at the earliest point that allows you to give due consideration to the relevant evidence.

‘I recognise that changing the timeline from recent years will present challenges for you, but I am sure you also share the government’s belief in the importance of returning to more timely annual pay processes.

‘To enable you to submit your report earlier, our department will aim to co-operate with all your deadlines and bring the evidence process forward.’

But, setting the parameters for the review, he told DDRB that all pay must be funded from departmental budgets and there will be ‘no additional funding available for pay settlements’.

He said: ‘As the Spending Review confirmed, all pay must be funded from departmental budgets and there will be no additional funding available for pay settlements.

‘My department’s evidence will set out the funds available to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for 2026 to 2027, following the Spending Review last month, as well as the recruitment and retention context alongside, earnings data and our plan for building an NHS fit for the future.’

Mr Streeting’s letter to the DDRB also said that the Government is ‘taking steps’ to address the ‘legitimate’ concerns that doctors have raised about their working conditions.

‘As a first step for resident doctors, over the next three years we will create 1,000 new training posts and will prioritise UK medical graduates,’ he added.  

The DDRB remit covers the whole of the United Kingdom and it is for each administration to make its own decisions on its approach to this year’s pay round and to communicate this to the DDRB directly.

The DDRB was asked to make a recommendation on GP partner pay for the first time in five years for 2024/25, noting the ‘significant’ cost increases they had faced over the last few years, and partners have since been included in the remit.

For 2025/26 the Government committed to ‘uplifting the pay element of the GP contract’ by 4% following DDRB recommendations, uplifting the minimum and maximum of the pay range for salaried GPs by 4% and uplifting the GP educators pay scale by 4% ‘all on a consolidated basis’.

The health secretary’s letter comes as the BMA’s resident doctors committee (formerly junior doctors) confirmed that they will be going ahead with industrial action over pay and conditions.

The union met with the Government last week but said that Mr Streeting’s commitments ‘did not go far enough to warrant calling off strikes’, and that they lacked ‘any substantive proposal on both pay and non-pay elements’.

The resident doctors committee said there was now ‘no choice’ other than to continue with the strikes, planned from 7am on Friday (25 July) to 7am next Wednesday (30 July).  

BMA resident doctors committee co-chairs Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt said: ‘We have been in talks with Wes Streeting and with his officials over the last few days, trying urgently to reach a compromise that will allow us to call off industrial action.

‘We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the Government. We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today.

‘Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges. While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors’ finances we have always been upfront that this is at its core a pay dispute.

‘The simplest and most direct means of restoring the more than a fifth of our pay that has eroded since 2008 is to raise our pay. While we were keen to discuss other items, it was made very clear by the Government that this obvious course of action was going to remain off the table.’