Dear colleague,
Please see our latest round-up of how your LMC team is working for you across North Central London.
Londonwide LMCs guidance in focus
GPC England advice: OpenSAFELY and access requirements compliance
GPCE have published clearer details on OpenSAFELY use and the expectation of compliance audits on access declarations. Please see our website. NHS England have updated their guidance to support practices with what GPCE hope are clearer instructions.
Latest updates and ongoing issues
West and North Central ICB Merger
The ICB executive team who will be working with CEO Frances O’Callaghan have now been appointed. Existing staff from NCL ICB have been appointed a number of the posts. From November the ICB boards will operate together (in common). The Strategy, Finance and Remuneration Committees will also be held in common. Other ICB governance arrangements will continue in their current formats for the moment. An ICB staff consultation will take place during December and January with the full merger going live 1 April 2026. The ICB asked colleagues to be compassionate towards ICB staff as they continue to go through the consultation process. We will bring you further updates as they develop.
NCL mental health interface updates
At our monthly mental health interface meeting with trust colleagues, we fed back issues concerning problems GPs were having in contacting staff via both the community and crisis lines. The trust has been recruiting additional staff and GPs in Haringey have advised us that they have noticed an improvement in responses to their calls. We continue to have discussions at meetings to monitor the roll-out of the single point of access for community mental health. We have also requested that work is undertaken to ensure GPs receive succinct, informative discharge summaries when mental health in-patients are discharged.
Interface prescribing
Following a useful meeting with lead pharmacists at the ICB, it is hoped that we will be able to secure a seat on the Interface Prescribing Group. This will enable us to continue to feed into the discussions about the difficulties GPs are experiencing on the ground, particularly with requests from secondary care providers relating to prescribing. Issues that we raised at the initial meeting included continuing difficulties of consultants who are not aware of the NCL Formulary; lack of understanding about the principles of shared care, problems caused by the lack of electronic prescribing (EPS). We will be meeting with the pharmacists again to follow up what progress has been made to address these issues.
DALS translation services
Last week we met with representatives from both DALS and the ICB as we have been receiving concerns from around the boroughs about the quality of the translation service since DALS took over from Languageline. Concerns included availability of translators in specific languages, quality and professionalism of individuals providing translation services and technical issues with calls dropping out. The DALS team was very responsive to concerns raised and are keen to receive feedback about specific cases so that they can investigate the issues arising. Their website does enable the completion of a feedback form, but it is recognised that this can be time-consuming when you are already busy. We have been advised that if you can hold on at the end of a phone call for 15 seconds you will be given the option to score the translator from 1-5 (anyone scoring 3 or below will be reviewed by DALS). The ICB has also agreed to see if a feedback system can be set up using ACCURX.
North Central London LMCs Strategic Leadership Network (SLN)
Topics of focus at the last LMC Chairs and Vice-Chairs SLN included:
- Ongoing interface issues relating to community services, particularly cutbacks in the district nursing and the impact on practices.
- Monitoring of issues involving the London Ambulance Service (LAS).
- Community opticians who do not make direct referrals to ophthalmology and difficulties with the community ophthalmology service including organising virtual appointments for eye conditions and expecting GPs to prescribe because of their lack of access to FP10s.
Digital Diagnostics Programme
Dr Vicky Weeks and Dr Toni Hazell attend the Digital Diagnostics Group regularly on behalf of all five LMCs. The NCL Digital Diagnostics Programme has set out a four-year roadmap and is working to prioritise projects and secure financial support to implement. The LMCs’ suggestions on priority workstreams have been included in the proposal that has been submitted to NHSE.
Protected learning time (PLT)
Practices can still apply to the ICB’s scheme to participate in part 2 of the PLT scheme for 2025-26; to date 52% of practices have applied to the scheme. You can find out more about the scheme and how to apply here.
Update from NCL ICB on Advice and Guidance – Enhanced Service
The Advice and Guidance (A&G) Enhanced Service was launched this May (applicable from 1 April 2025) and we are very pleased that all NCL practices have signed up to this service. We believe it is a welcome addition in supporting the primary care work involved in seeking pre-referral advice from secondary care.
Coding activity
As you will be aware, in June 2025 an NCL Advice and Guidance EMIS template was created to support Advice and Guidance DES payment capture. We would encourage the use of this template for all types of advice and guidance. It is accessible from the F12 NCL standard referral letter protocol.
We also ask that practices use the SNOMED code “choose and book advice and guidance request” – 820641000000100. This will ensure comprehensive capture of all activity. Best practice would also be to ensure that all activity that is undertaken via Consultant Connect is also coded on EMIS.
Making Claims
Thank you to those practices who are submitting regular and timely claims for A&G activity on CQRS, although there are still a considerable number of outstanding claims that are either waiting for sign off at a practice level or awaiting data from the practice. Please be reminded to ensure you have a figure uploaded for each month, even if it is a ‘0’ for no activity that month – that prevents any unnecessary reminders and chasing.
As we advised at the start of this service and again in September, the funding the ICB has been allocated for this provision is an NCL ICB cap from which we draw down and is not an allocated budget. Whilst this has been apportioned equitably across practices as a practice cap, based on weighted list size, if indicated by submitted claims, the ICB will be required in the latter part of the year to take a view on adjusting and reallocating the aggregated cap in line with likely usage and need, particularly where some practices have not used or drastically underused their cap. We are currently in the processes of assessing this. Therefore, please continue to regularly upload your claims on the 12th of each month to ensure we capture a full picture of your activity.
Useful guidance and information on the Advice and Guidance ES can be found on the GP website here.
NHS England seeking case studies
NHSE and DH are gathering case studies or examples of best practice on any element of utilising A&G and have offered to support writing/formatting the case studies if needed. They are also looking for GPs, who are advocates for A&G willing to do some media in the future. If this is something you are interested in, please do get in touch via nclicb.nclprimarycare@nhs.net.
Refreshed Londonwide LMCs Buying Group
Our substantially update Buying Group offer is now live, bringing high quality products, service, opportunities and offers to London general practice at the best prices and with the best possible deals.
The offer now includes a supplier for each of these areas: consumables, insurance, training and practice support and wellbeing (including free and discounted tickets to music, theatre and sports events). In addition, we have four suppliers for digital and tech services covering: cloud telephony, records digitisation, call-and-recall automation and patient registration automation.
The Londonwide LMC NCL sector team
You can find the details of your LMC Chairs across NCL here. If you have any specific concerns arising about this or any other issue, please contact us via joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk.
Best wishes,
The NCL Londonwide LMCs team:
Jamie Wright, Director Primary Care,
Vicky Weeks, Medical Director,
Joni Wilson-Kaye, Assistant Director Primary Care – joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk ,
Sarah Ocran, Committee Liaison Executive – sarah.ocran@lmc.org.uk