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.
- Guidance: System co-ordination centre guidance: System co-ordination framework [27/1].
- Contract: Shorter-form NHS Standard Contract 2026/2& (Particulars, Service Conditions, General Conditions) [28/1].
- Contract: NHS Standard Contract 2026/27 consultation response [30/1].
- Guidance: Patient safety incident response framework and supporting guidance [29/1].
Department of Health and Social Care
- Statement: New bill to prioritise UK medical graduates for NHS training [27/1].
- Secretary of State sets out the need to prioritise homegrown talent for foundation and specialty training posts to support a sustainable NHS workforce.
- Guidance: Medicines that you cannot export from the UK or hoard [28/1].
- Guidance: Requesting transfers of NHS property [29/1].
- Press release: New fund to tackle cancer screening inequalities and save lives [29/1].
- £200 million for local cancer care to address gap in screening uptake and reduce screening inequalities in deprived areas.
UK Health Security Agency
- Guidance: Measles and rubella elimination UK indicators [26/1].
- Guidance: Childhood vaccination invitation letter templates [27/1].
- News: Could sleep app data help identify respiratory disease trends in England? [28/1].
- News: Tuberculosis notifications in England stabilise in 2025 [29/1].
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- Guidance: Medicines: apply for a variation to your marketing authorisation [26/1].
- News: MHRA Takes Over Chair of International Access Consortium for 2026 [26/1].
- Press release: MHRA seizes illegal medicines worth almost £45m in 2025 – disrupting major criminal networks [26/1].
- Press release: MHRA issues new guidance for people using mental health apps and technologies [27/1].
- Guidance: Submission and assessment timetables for innovative medicines applications [27/1].
Policy, think tanks, charities, and representative bodies
The King’s Fund
- What if the ‘nanny state’ is exactly what our health needs? [30/1].
- This blog argues that, despite criticism of the “nanny state,” stronger public health interventions may be exactly what the UK needs given worsening national health trends. Citing recent Health Survey for England data showing high levels of inactivity, long‑term illness and obesity, the blog suggests that bold measures—such as tighter regulation of unhealthy products, smoking and vaping restrictions, and online safety laws—are widely supported by the public, even if often labelled paternalistic. It highlights how the term “nanny state” is rooted in outdated stereotypes, and notes evidence that decisive, protective approaches can lead to better health outcomes. Ultimately, the piece calls for reframing the debate: these interventions are less about limiting freedom and more about giving people fairer, healthier choices and relieving pressure on the NHS.
- Innovating care, closer to home: launching our new programme [27/1].
- This blog announces the launch of a new two‑and‑a‑half‑year programme, developed in partnership with Roche, to explore how innovation can help deliver the long‑standing ambition of providing more care closer to home. The piece highlights that while people overwhelmingly prefer receiving safe, effective care in familiar community settings, progress has been slow due to workforce shortages, funding pressures, fragmented services, and entrenched hospital‑centric models. The blog argues that technology and innovation—historically drivers of hospital‑based care—could instead be intentionally used to enable a shift towards community care. The programme will focus on three areas of innovation: treatments that can be safely delivered outside hospitals, improved community‑based diagnostics and monitoring, and new care models such as virtual wards and neighbourhood‑level multidisciplinary teams.
Nuffield Trust
- The changing terrain of mental health in A&E: specialised care or the same old bottlenecks? [28/1].
- This blog examines how emergency departments are struggling with rising and increasingly complex mental health attendances, despite plans to invest £120 million in specialist mental health crisis centres co‑located with A&E departments.
- It highlights long waits, overcrowding, and the distress these environments create for patients, as well as concerns from staff about safety and escalating behavioural crises. The analysis shows that mental health cases now make up about 2% of attendances, but a larger share of people waiting at any time due to longer delays, with many presentations involving self-harm, suicidal intent, aggression, or hallucinations. While specialist mental health A&Es aim to reduce waits and improve care, the blog warns they may struggle to overcome persistent bottlenecks, especially given blurred boundaries between physical and mental health needs and inconsistent staffing of liaison psychiatry services
Ipsos
- Britons support banning phones in schools, banning children under 16 on social media, and stricter measures on non-consensual AI-driven intimate image sharing [28/1].
- Over half (56%) of Britons support banning mobile phones in schools altogether, up 8 ppts since September 2024. Seven in ten (72%) would support a law that requires social companies to use age-verification to ban children under the age of 16 from accessing their platforms.
London Trusts
Barts Health NHS Trust
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust