LMC Update – 05 April 2024

CAMBS LMC EVENT: Thursday 18 April 2024 – 12:30 – 2:00pm via Zoom

Directors duties and responsibilities, corporate governance and running your company

Cambs LMC is hosting an online training session for those that have, or are considering, setting up a limited liability, incorporated structure for your PCN, we are pleased to invite you to attend the following Cambs LMC hosted online training session:

LMC Law offers a practical seminar for incorporated organisations which includes general corporate governance and director’ duties and responsibilities, directors’ liabilities, decision making, difficult directors, conflicts of interest and company housekeeping.

If this is of interest, please email office@cambslmc.org with details of those who would like to attend from your PCN.

Cambs LMC Communications

Further to our email last week around the changes to the LINK, we would like to issue a correction to the information given around the available local WhatsApp groups.

The Cambridgeshire GP WhatsApp group is for GPs only and independent of the LMC. We apologise for any confusion around this or upset caused.

The Cambs and Peterborough GP SOS WhatsApp group was set up to inform GPs predominantly of national communications and is hosted by the LMC. As your GPCE representative, Dr Diana Hunter, Chair of Cambs LMC receives information from central communications that require cascading out locally. It is mostly broadcast only although we have opened the chat up around webinars.

The membership of this WhatsApp is for GPs initially, however this may be open to change and we will inform you accordingly.

With the changes to the LINK mailing list , our next planned step is to add all those who are current members of the SOS group to a new LINK equivalent WhatsApp group for local communications and discussion. This membership will be for GPs and PMs, in the same way that the link always has been.

We will let you know when that group is up and running and we are planning to add numbers across.

You will have the option to opt out, either by emailing us at office@cambslmc.org or removing yourself from the group at any time.

GP Referendum BMA voting review

We wish to thank the profession for their support and engagement with the GP Referendum. We are aware of some database issues identified within the BMA which meant that, despite everyone’s best efforts, some GPs who wanted to vote weren’t able to.

In order to better understand why GP colleagues couldn’t vote, we are collating information to make sure that no GP is disenfranchised in any future votes. We are asking our local GP colleagues who were entitled to vote but didn’t manage to, to complete this form: https://forms.office.com/e/Wk3P4PjzPE

Any information you share will be used strictly for the purposes of working with the BMA membership department to amend these issues.

National update from BMA

On behalf of GPC England, I want to thank every single GP and GP registrar across the country who took part in our referendum. Let us not forget, this referendum wasn’t even a ballot, it was merely a dress rehearsal for what’s around the corner. Either way, had it been a ballot, it would have comfortably passed the required thresholds.

This referendum was a temperature check of the profession – and make no mistake – in the week where we have a third consecutive contract imposition, we are at boiling point. I’m overwhelmed to share the result that more than 99.2% of you have voted firmly against this contract. This is an unequivocal result that will demand NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, Government, and other parties now sit up and take notice.

It is now clear that we are one profession, which has spoken with one voice and said enough – time’s up. This contract imposition does not give practices stability. It does not give us hope. This contract, which NHSE are choosing to impose upon us, is not safe.

The contract changes, which will be imposed by the Government and NHS England from 1 April 2024, include a national practice contract baseline funding uplift of just £179m for England’s general practices, way below inflation in recent years, meaning many practices will struggle to stay financially viable over the next six to 12 months and risk closure.

The day after the referendum closed, GPC England met to decide and determine the next steps we’ll be taking as a profession knowing you’re standing right behind us. We are now starting to receive the full dataset and results breakdown from Civica, and we’ll share that with you in due course too.

When I qualified as a GP in 2008, we were called the ‘jewel in the crown of the NHS’. General practice has been demeaned, diminished, diluted, bullied and gaslit long enough. We now start the fight back, bringing our patients with us. Patients want access to their family doctor in a surgery that feels safe, with a well-resourced team ready to meet the needs of our communities, and that’s what we want too.

We are the bedrock upon which the rest of the NHS stands, with 400 million patient contacts a year. Almost 1.4 million every single day. That’s a lot of voters.

So congratulations, ‘team GP’. The battle to save general practice has begun. I’m proud to represent you, and I know that your BMA committee, GPC England, is proud to serve you.

We will be in touch soon with more information, guidance on the 2024/25 contract and next steps for us all. Watch my video about the GP contract referendum results: GPCE contract referendum results. Find out about the contract changes and read our FAQs to learn what this means for you. Link to press release: GPs vote overwhelmingly to reject contract changes in BMA referendum

LMC Update – 05 April 2024

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