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: The Model Acute Pathway: standards for care of acutely unwell patients in their first 72 hours in hospital [9/2].
- Guidance: The Model Emergency Department: high performing urgent and emergency care pathways [9/2].
- Guidance: Maternity Outcomes Signal System (MOSS) standard operating procedures [10/2].
- Guidance: NHS England external freedom to speak up policy for NHS workers [10/2].
- Guidance: NHS productivity growth estimate (2025/26) – methodology [12/2].
- Letter: Actions to deliver Agenda for Change uplift and a fairer deal for nurses [12/2].
Department of Health and Social Care
- Guidance: Public health grants to local authorities: 2026 to 2027 [9/2].
- Guidance: MoD integration into the NHS Prescription Service: directions [11/2].
- Press release: Nurses to benefit from boost to graduate pay and job progression [11/2].
- Guidance: Healthy child programme: ages 0 to 19 high-impact area framework [12/2].
- Press release: Funding boost for young people’s mental health services [13/2].
- Early support hubs across England to receive a £7 million funding boost to bolster services for young people.
UK Health Security Agency
- Guidance: MMRV programme: information for healthcare practitioners [10/2].
- Guidance: Pre-release access lists: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) maternal and older adults vaccination coverage in England reports [11/2].
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- Guidance: Pharmacovigilance following agreement of the Windsor Framework [9/2].
- News: MHRA introduces additional restrictions for use of the Chikungunya vaccine (IXCHIQ) [11/2].
Policy, think tanks, charities, and representative bodies
The King’s Fund
- Creating the conditions where care can thrive: four actions for clinical leaders [13/2].
- This blog argues that improving staff wellbeing requires shifting from an individual‑focused resilience narrative to organisational accountability, emphasising that burnout stems from high responsibility paired with low control. Clinical leaders at a recent roundtable highlighted long‑standing barriers to wellbeing—such as inadequate basic facilities, unsafe environments, and exposure to racism and abuse—which undermine staff morale and can lead to moral injury when people cannot provide the care they were trained to give. The blog calls for organisations to create the conditions in which care can thrive by fostering engagement, enabling staff agency, and investing in leadership that prioritises listening, values‑driven practice, and trust‑building, noting that high‑quality leadership development and protected time to lead are essential.
- Public sector crises, ‘the welfare crunch’ and the future of health and care [12/2].
- This blog argues that the UK is experiencing a “welfare crunch,” where rising demand for public services meets increasingly insufficient resources, leading to mounting crises across social care, local government, the NHS, universities, and other core systems. It describes how long‑term structural pressures—such as slowing economic growth, reduced productivity, demographic ageing, and the rising cost of modern public services—combine with political choices since the late 1970s to strain the post‑war welfare settlement. These pressures manifest as longer waits, rationing, growing inequalities, and a stretched, demoralised workforce, all of which erode public confidence in the welfare state’s ability to guarantee a decent standard of living.
- Measuring a moving target: the complex story of public health and prevention spending in local government [10/2].
- This blog highlights that although prevention remains a core aim of the government’s health reforms, the reality of local public health spending is far more complex. While the public health grant is set to rise to £4.4 billion in 2026–27 and £4.5 billion in 2027–28, this still leaves funding below its 2016–17 real‑terms value and equates to only about £70 per person per year. The blog explains that headline grant figures increasingly fail to reflect true spending because governments have relied on short‑term, ring‑fenced discretionary funds—such as for smoking cessation and drug and alcohol services—making overall investment harder to track and hampering long‑term planning. Even with recent adjustments that bring some of this fragmented funding into the main grant, real‑terms support for public health continues to flatline, raising concerns about whether the promised shift toward prevention is actually being delivered.
The Health Foundation
- Designing health into the devolution bill [12/2].
- This blog argues that improving public health must be embedded at the core of England’s devolution plans, as poor health is a growing constraint on the UK’s economic performance and widens regional inequalities. It highlights stark regional health gaps—such as mortality rates being around 20% higher in the North East and North West compared with the South West—and notes that 8.2 million working‑age adults live with long‑term health conditions that limit their ability to work. For devolution to genuinely boost economic growth and strengthen public services, the authors stress that strategic authorities need clear responsibility for shaping the social and economic factors that influence health, working closely with councils and local partners to improve outcomes. They argue that the current English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill represent a key opportunity to ensure health improvement is built into the structure and powers of these authorities
Care Quality Commission
- New guidance for inspectors on care in non-clinical spaces [12/2].
- CQC has issued updated guidance to help inspectors assess the safety and quality of hospital care delivered in non‑clinical spaces, such as corridors and waiting rooms, which are increasingly used due to capacity pressures. The guidance emphasises that such “corridor care” is unacceptable and must not become normalised, while recognising that hospitals may at times need to make difficult risk‑based decisions when demand exceeds available clinical space. Inspectors will now look for evidence that hospitals have assessed the safest place to care for patients, taken steps to minimise safety risks, developed plans to end the use of non‑designated spaces, and are working with system partners to improve patient flow and prevent long‑term reliance on temporary care environments.
Nuffield Trust
- Commissioning: lessons from the last 30 years and implications for the new role of ICBs [11/2].
- This article reviews how NHS commissioning has undergone repeated reorganisations since its creation in 1990 and argues that the new strategic role for Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) must learn from three decades of mixed results. It explains that commissioning has historically ranged from transactional contracting to wider system leadership, yet has often struggled to meet expectations, with international evidence showing that “strategic purchasing” rarely performs well. As ICBs become the central drivers of commissioning—while being merged and required to shrink in size—the article stresses the importance of drawing on lessons from past reforms, strengthening capabilities, and ensuring that new neighbourhood‑level and integrated provider models genuinely improve population health rather than repeat previous shortcomings.
General Medical Council
- Deep-rooted inequalities ‘distort opportunities and weaken healthcare culture’, GMC says [15/2].
- This report warns that deep‑rooted inequalities in medicine continue to distort career opportunities and damage healthcare culture, particularly affecting ethnic minority and non‑UK qualified doctors working in the NHS. Chief Executive Charlie Massey emphasises that these disparities are not inevitable and urges employers and leaders to intensify efforts to eliminate them. The report shows progress in reducing disproportionate employer referrals—down 48% since the 2016–2020 baseline—but highlights much slower progress in tackling persistent inequities in medical education and training, where significant gaps remain for UK‑qualified ethnic minority doctors and students despite some narrowing in exam pass‑rate differentials. Massey stresses that fairness and equality are essential for both productivity and patient care and calls for scaling up interventions that have demonstrated impact.
London Trusts
Barts Health NHS Trust
- Article: Radiotherapy departments at St Bartholomew’s Hospital are proud to be amongst the first to achieve gold in a nation-wide green framework [10/2].
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust