Government confirms extra £200m for small GP practice premises upgrades
A further £200m has been allocated for GP practices to claim for small premises upgrades, the Government has confirmed.
The 10 Capital Year Plan, published today, confirmed a further £200m of the Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund (PCUMF) will be invested into GP practice refurbishments during ‘this Parliament’.
This is in addition to the £102m allocated from the fund during 2025/26, which the Government has said added nine million additional GP appointments.
That money had been earmarked for refurbishments to 1,027 GP practices last year, although the newly published plan said only 790 of those had accessed the money.
The rest of the £426m PCUMF (£226m) will support the creation of up to 50 neighbourhood health centres (NHCs) from repurposed NHS buildings.
The plan said: ‘The capital dimension of the shift to community is not just about NHCs. We recognise that truly effective neighbourhood health will encompass a range of different facilities and buildings that work together and integrate effectively to ensure universal coverage.
‘For that reason, we will continue the PCUMF, providing £200m of further investment this Parliament. This will deliver additional upgrades to existing GP practices, increasing capacity and enabling extra appointments.’
While the £102m for 2025/26 could not be rolled over into subsequent years, the plan said the £200m would move to a ‘multi-year allocation’.
The remaining £226m of the PCUMF will fund around 50 of the 250 ‘one stop shop’ NHCs pledged by the Government, of which 120 will open by 2030.
Lord Darzi’s 2024 report identified a £37bn shortfall of capital investment in the NHS and found that one in five buildings in the primary care estate were older than the NHS (founded in 1948).
In response to the announcement, BMA representative body chair Dr Amit Kochhar welcomed the investment but warned that money allocated for NHCs from the PCUMF would likely be at the expense of properly funding GP practice upgrades.
Dr Kochhar said the plan ‘does seem to respond to persistent calls from the BMA and many others for greater, long-term investment into NHS buildings and infrastructure.
‘However, big questions remain over how far this funding will stretch, and how much difference it will make to patients and the staff who treat them. Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS concluded that it had been starved of capital funding, but this new plan appears set to keep the health service acutely hungry for investment.
‘In general practice 20% of buildings predate the foundation of the NHS itself, with capital investment needed to bring surgeries up-to-date, and to meet the changing needs of both patients and diverse staff teams.
‘This announcement hints at this, but the emphasis on new neighbourhood health centres must not be at the expense of improving people’s local practices that they are used to and which provide invaluable continuity of care. And once again, it looks unlikely that the announced overall investment will be sufficient.’
Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) GP co-lead Dr Steve Taylor said the figures on the take-up for the PCUMF last year were disappointing.
Dr Taylor told Pulse: ‘Although any additional funding is welcome, the fact that in the previous year just under 800 practices of the intended 1,000 received grants shows that there are hoops to jump through, and poor allocation of resources remains a problem. £100m is not a huge pot of money given the needs of existing facilities.’
Meanwhile, the Health Foundation’s deputy director of policy Tim Gardner said while investment in GP premises was ‘welcome’, the Government’s ambitions on shifting care to neighbourhoods could not be delivered by ‘buildings alone’.
‘There are still fewer fully qualified GPs per head of population than a decade ago, and general practice receives a smaller share of NHS spending than it did 10 years ago’, he said.
