This report is a flexible summary, with the aim of sharing and highlighting a wide range of data and policy information relating to London general practice published in a given week. Where we view information to be of significant interest it is reproduced directly below the links to make the key points quicker to digest.
Please feel free to share any useful stats/links you think we could include in future reports.
Official bodies
NHS Digital
- All recent data releases can be seen here.
- Consultation: Consultation on proposed amendment to the 2025/26 NHS Payment Scheme [11/8].
- Letter:Graduate guarantee for newly qualified nurses and midwives [12/8].
- Regulatory:NHS provider directory and registers of licensed healthcare providers[12/8].
- Guidance:Industrial action in the NHS [14/8].
Department of Health and Social Care
- Guidance:Medicines eligible for Northern Ireland MHRA Authorised Route [11/8].
- Press release:Job boost for newly qualified nurses and midwives[11/8].
- Thousands of new jobs will be unlocked across the healthcare sector to make sure there are enough jobs for every newly qualified nurse and midwife in England.
- Guidance: Survey of adult carers in England 2025 to 2026 [12/8].
- Guidance:Healthcare education and training tariff: 2025 to 2026[14/8].
- Information about what the tariffs cover, how to use the tariffs and in what circumstances the national tariffs may be varied.
- Press release: Government works with TikTok to help safety for treatments abroad [15/8].
UK Health Security Agency
- Guidance:Mpox: affected countries[13/8].
- News: Rise in chikungunya cases in UK travellers returning from abroad [14/8].
- Guidance:Influenza vaccines marketed in the UK[14/8].
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- Notice: Register of brokers authorised to deal in human medicines [11/8].
- News:MHRA approves teplizumab to delay progression of type 1 diabetes [14/8].
Policy, think tanks, charities, and representative bodies
The King’s Fund
- What impact do strikes have on the NHS? [14/8].
- This blog highlights that NHS strikes have led to over 1.3 million rescheduled appointments and cost at least £1.5 billion. Beyond financial impact, strikes have strained staff morale, disrupted care, and affected public trust—underscoring the urgent need for renewed negotiations and long-term workforce solutions.
- Do we really understand what a healthy weight looks like for all ethnicities? [14/8].
- This blog questions whether current BMI benchmarks accurately reflect healthy weight across all ethnicities. It highlights that BMI standards are based on White populations and often exclude people from Mixed or Other ethnic backgrounds, despite their growing numbers in the UK. NICE introduced ethnicity-specific BMI thresholds in 2023, but evidence gaps and the fluid nature of ethnic identity make these benchmarks problematic. The blog argues for more inclusive, flexible health measures that reflect the UK’s increasing ethnic diversity and avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to defining healthy weight.
The Health Foundation
- The hidden work in health care: unpaid overtime in the NHS [15/8].
- This blog highlights the scale and impact of unpaid overtime—often called “discretionary effort”—among NHS staff. For over 20 years, around half of NHS workers have regularly worked beyond their contracted hours, helping maintain care quality despite staffing gaps. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, this discretionary effort has declined, with fewer staff reporting unpaid hours. In 2024, unpaid work was equivalent to the workload of at least 33,000 full-time staff, down from 38,500 in 2021. The blog warns that NHS planning often overlooks this hidden labour, and future workforce strategies must account for changing staff motivation and capacity to sustain productivity.
- Action on healthier working lives must begin with accessible and inclusive workplaces [13/8].
- This blog argues that improving working lives must start with making workplaces more accessible. It highlights the persistent disability employment gap and calls for proactive adjustments, reforms to support schemes, and inclusion of disabled voices in shaping policy—all to create fairer, more inclusive work environments.
Nuffield Trust
- Why is the planned care waiting list coming down and what does the data really tell us? [13/8].
- This blog explains that the recent drop in the NHS planned care waiting list is mainly due to administrative removals rather than improved treatment rates. More patients are still being added than treated, and data quirks—like pathway clean-ups—are making the list appear smaller without reflecting real progress in care delivery.
London Trusts
Barts Health NHS Trust