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.
- Letter: Letter from NHS England’s Chief Executive thanking staff for their efforts in managing the latest round of British Medical Association industrial action [13/4].
- Guidance: Minimum standards for keyworking services for autistic children and young people and children and young people with a learning disability [14/4].
- Guidance: Status codes for NHS newborn blood spot (NBS) screening programme [15/4].
- Guidance: Technology enabled care referral guidance [17/4].
Department of Health and Social Care
- Press release: Health Secretary statement on end of BMA resident doctor strikes [13/4].
- Press release: NHS patients to get quicker tests and scans closer to home [13/4].
- Government invests £237 million to expand community diagnostic centres across England.
- Press release: Women across the country will be better heard and served under new plans set out in the renewed Women’s Health Strategy [14/4].
- Press release: Government drives forward its 150-day clinical trial target [15/4].
- NHS patients get faster access to groundbreaking treatments as government drives forward its 150-day clinical trial target.
- Press release: Firefighters to benefit from bespoke health support [16/4].
- Government to back firefighters with tailor-made, research-backed health support during and after service.
- Press release: Boost for thousands of aspiring health professionals from deprived areas [17/4].
UK Health Security Agency
- Guidance: Pneumococcal vaccination for older adults and for individuals in a clinical risk group: Information for healthcare practitioners [13/4].
- Guidance: Details of the UK Health Security Agency’s nationwide mosquito surveillance survey [16/4].
- Guidance: Management of tuberculosis in secure settings in England [17/4].
- Guidance: Health protection in children and young people’s settings, including education [17/4].
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- Press release: MHRA and eBay working in partnership to safeguard public health [13/4].
- News: Single-dose 7.2mg semaglutide (Wegovy) pen approved to treat adult patients with obesity [14/4].
- Guidance: Archiving and retention of clinical trial records [14/4].
- News: Dame Jennifer Dixon issued an article looking at how to seize the growing opportunities of AI and technology ahead [15/4].
BMA
- Press release: Covid Inquiry highlights success of vaccination programme due to dedication of staff, says BMA [16/4].
Policy, think tanks, charities, and representative bodies
Ipsos
- Patients continue to struggle with NHS admin [16/4].
- Ipsos polling for the King’s Fund, National Voices and Healthwatch England has again explored people’s experiences of NHS admin, and the impact of that on their views of the NHS. Read more in the King’s Fund, National Voices and Healthwatch England long read, Still Lost in the System.
- The public is less likely to think NHS communications are good than in 2024.
- Just two in five (43%) think the NHS is good at communicating with patients about things like appointments and test results (down from 52% in 2025).
- Just one in three think the NHS is good at ensuring there is someone for patients to contact about their ongoing care (32%) or at keeping people informed about what is happening with their care and treatment (32%) down from 43% and 42% respectively in 2024.
YouGov
- Seven in ten NHS workers say the health service is poorly prepared for another pandemic [14/4].
- A YouGov survey of more than 1,000 NHS workers has found widespread concern about the health service’s ability to cope with another pandemic. Nearly seven in ten staff believe the NHS is poorly prepared, with concerns heightened by recent infectious disease outbreaks and the findings of the Covid Inquiry, which concluded the system came close to collapse during Covid‑19. While some staff feel preparedness has improved since before the pandemic, a significant proportion believe little has changed—or that the NHS is now even less prepared.
- 69% of NHS workers say the health service is poorly prepared for another pandemic,
- 26% say it is very poorly prepared,
- Only 22% believe the NHS is well prepared,
- 41% think the NHS is better prepared now than before Covid‑19,
- 37% say preparedness has not improved at all,
- 16% believe the NHS is less prepared now than it was before 2020.
Nuffield Trust
- Unpacking the neighbourhood health framework: the good, the bad and the puzzling [14/4].
- This analysis of the neighbourhood health framework finds that while it strengthens the vision of shifting care from hospitals into communities, it raises serious questions about deliverability. The authors welcome the broader rationale for neighbourhood working – including improved access, patient experience and outcomes, not just hospital pressure relief – and the stated commitment to local flexibility. However, they argue the framework’s ambition is unrealistic given widespread system disruption, severe workforce shortages and tight finances, with too many objectives and too little prioritisation.
- Key concerns include under‑developed plans for staffing neighbourhood services, unclear approaches to managing clinical risk across organisations, and confusing accountability and performance measures. The blog also highlights puzzling elements such as plans to divert 25% of outpatient referrals, the risk that acute trusts may dominate neighbourhood models, and the lack of clarity on funding shifts with no new money attached. Overall, the framework is seen as neither a breakthrough nor an empty gesture, but a potentially promising agenda whose success will depend on whether follow‑up policy on funding, contracts, workforce and local autonomy can resolve these unresolved tensions.
Smart Thinking
Think tank: Re: State
- Beyond caring: a new funding model for later-life social care [16/4].
- This report argues that England’s adult social care system is structurally broken, with chronic underfunding, rising unmet need, and escalating financial pressure on individuals, families, councils and providers, a crisis that will worsen as the population ages. It contends that using a single funding model for both working‑age and later‑life social care is flawed, given the very different needs and risk profiles involved, and calls for these systems to be disentangled.
- The report proposes a radical new funding model for later‑life social care based on risk pooling, sustainability, fairness and deliverability, centred on a mandatory Later Life Care Fund to which working‑age adults would contribute over their careers. This fund, privately managed and cohort‑based, would then cover most individuals’ later‑life care costs, significantly reducing reliance on means‑testing and protecting assets. Through proof‑of‑concept modelling, the report argues this approach could create a more stable, fair and sustainable system, warning that failure to act would leave later‑life social care at the brink of collapse.
London Trusts
Barts Health NHS Trust