Since taking up the post of CEO 52 weeks ago, I’ve worked on the priorities that matter to London’s GPs and their practice teams, supported every day by the remarkable expertise of Londonwide LMCs’ staff and the leadership of our elected LMC members across our 27 committees. Their insight, commitment, and local knowledge are the foundation of everything we achieve together.
I’d like to open with an example of how I’ve been highlighting the challenges created by online access requirements. In this new video, designed to help inform patients, I explain how expanding patients’ options to access the same finite capacity in general practice creates tension and diverts GPs from seeing those most in need.
Please use the video where you think it will be helpful in explaining what these access changes meant to patients or other professionals whose work interacts with general practice. A shorter version is also available should you wish to share it with your PPG or on your practice website.
Across the organisation, we have been working hard to represent, directly support and advocate for you and your practice.
Representation
Our representation work is broad and has a direct impact on you in your consulting room. For example, we work hard with commissioners and other organisations to address the external issues that cause you frustration and impact on your ability to deliver safe effective care to your patients. We have worked on over 300 issues across London over the past year!
With your LMC’s on-the-ground intelligence, combined with our pan-London clinical and contractual expertise, we work with commissioners to develop local enhanced services that are properly funded, realistic, and workable. We know how important workable local contracts are to meet the needs of your patients and for the stability of your practice.
Direct support
We work continuously to understand the impact of the increasing pressures and challenges practices face, then to further develop our wide offer of support. For example, last month we ran our first live webinars.
Our main areas of support are:
 | Your voice in negotiating local services delivered by your practice. |
 | Raising and addressing day-to-day frustrations, like referral pathway problems. |
 | Influencing service changes, including neighbourhood working and other NHS reforms. |
 | Improving how hospitals and other services work with GPs. |
 | Support and signposting for individual GPs in difficulty. |
 | Practice support and advice, including regulation, premises and contracts |
 | Information, templates, guidance and tools. |
 | Training for all practice roles, from single sessions to full courses. |
 | Access to Londonwide LMCs Buying Group. |
 | Championing the value of GPs and their practices, so that GPs and their practices are valued understood and supported in policy, political and public spheres. |
Advocacy
We work hard to advocate for you and your practice in a health and care system in which general practice is often not considered with parity of esteem and influence of other parts of the NHS. It is vital that we work to ensure that all parts of the system understand what we offer to our patients and the complexity and value of our care.
Patients are not machines that can be broken down into parts and processed in isolation. They bring their unique history, emotion, risk, and need, and often they require trusted relationships to be understood and cared for safely. And yet we are being pushed into less effective, transactional models of care. This is exacerbating the problems faced by the NHS not improving them.
We know that the value general practice offers to patients, communities, and the NHS is profound – and often not fully understood. We know and the evidence shows that the characteristics of authentic general practice – continuity of care, holistic care etc are so important and yet these are being eroded. We know the importance of local practices that are part of local communities.
When I listen to what political leaders, commissioners, patients and colleagues in other parts of the health system say, I hear a remarkably consistent end goal – keeping people healthy in their communities, with services configured around their needs. The real issues surround how this is done and where the decision-making lies, every step further it moves from the consulting room is a step further away from the realities of 21st century general practice.
Becoming fit for the future
Over the past year we have completed an extensive stocktake to ensure Londonwide LMCs is truly fit for the future -meeting the evolving needs of GPs and practices and working in the most effective way. This has led to significant internal changes and a major organisational development programme.
The aim is clear:
- Be closer to the practices and GPs we represent,
- Reach more GPs, more consistently, across London.
- Improve our offer across services, representation, and advocacy, so our impact is felt in consulting rooms and in policy forums.
I’m proud of what we have achieved this year, and proud to have led an organisation of such dedicated and expert people. But there’s lots more to do.
Thank you to every GP, practice manager, nurse, HCA, administrator, and practice colleague across London – and to our LMC members and Londonwide LMCs team – for your relentless commitment. The year ahead will be challenging, but we are better organised, more connected, and more determined than ever to protect and strengthen general practice for the people and communities we serve.
Best wishes,
Dr Lisa Harrod-Rothwell
CEO
Londonwide LMCs
Key achievements and activity over the last 12 months
Representing you
Led by Lisa, collaborative working with commissioners and other providers at borough, ICS, and London levels, Londonwide LMCs and our individual committees has increased – focussed on tackling system failures that create risks to patient safety, harm patient care, and cause needless frustration and despair in our consulting rooms.
Over the past year alone, we have worked to address over 300 system issues affecting the safety and effectiveness of care that GPs are able to provide, ranging from specific contractual issues ranging from shared care and service provision through to system failures such as problems with path or community services. And everything in between.
We have helped shape decisions that affect practices and patient care, worked to improve interfaces with hospitals and other services at a local level, and negotiated safe, effective, fairly resourced local contracts.
Advocacy and influence
Led by Lisa at a national and regional level, we advocate for GPs and LMCs locally, regionally, and in national-level policy, strategy, and public debate to bridge the gap between frontline expertise, experience, and insight and decision-making.
In her first year as CEO, Lisa has met with the Minister for Primary Care, members of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, national and specialist medical journalists, and colleagues in other representative organisations; making the case for general practice and calling for decision making to move closer to the consulting room, where the accountability and weight of their consequences is carried by those on the front line.
Recognising the hard work and dedication seen ever day in our London practices, the second London General Practice Awards recognised dozens of talented individuals and teams for their amazing work for their colleagues and patients. It was also an opportunity to gather together representatives from commissioning, regulation, medical education, alongside MPs, local councillors and LMC members, all to hear about the issues affecting frontline care.
Supporting GPs and practices with queries and professional issues
Our GP and practice support team continue to support practices and practitioners across London and have opened nearly 200 new cases, reflecting the increasing pressures and challenges practices face. This includes help with complaints, CQC inspections, contracts, partnerships, appraisal, revalidation, Performance and GMC processes. And these cases inform our work in other areas, from guidance through to advocacy at the highest levels.
Recognising and acting on the concerns of constituent practices is key to Lisa’s approach as CEO and this April saw Londonwide LMCs hold our first live webinars explaining the impact of the 2026-27 GP contract (recording available here), led by Lisa alongside an expert team drawn from across Londonwide LMCs.
Upskilling the general practice workforce and saving practices money
Our training program have supported partner succession and team development, while our refreshed Buying Group helps practices save money and reduce risk across consumables, digital services, and insurance.
Mindful of the financial pressures on general practice in the Capital, Lisa’s focus has been on developing additional relationships and activities so that Londonwide LMCs can continue to provide, and add to, the high-quality support and services to practices.