Greater Manchester has the highest number of GP practices due to receive premises upgrade funding, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has announced.
The £100m funding for estates was initially announced in the autumn budget in October, with plans to upgrade 200 GP estates across England.
However, the DHSC has today said that 1,027 practices spread out across the 42 ICBs will receive funding to create additional space, boost productivity and improve patient care.
Greater Manchester has the highest number of practices set to benefit from this funding, with 165 on the list of supported schemes.
This is followed by South West London, with 56 practices, and Cheshire and Merseyside with 53. The ICB area with the least projects funded is Kent and Medway with two practices.
Practices that receive the funding, which is called the Utilisation and Modernisation Fund 2025 to 2026, include Prospect Medical Practice in Norwich, where new clinical rooms will be created to deliver consultations. Vacant office spaces in Harden Health Centre in Walsall will also be converted into clinical consultation rooms.
Projects will be delivered in the 2025/26 financial year, with the first upgrades to happen in summer 2025.
Health secretary, Wes Streeting, said: ‘It will be a long road, but this government is putting in the work to fix our NHS and make it fit for the future.
‘These are simple fixes for our GP surgeries but for too long they were left to ruin, allowing waiting lists to build and stopping doctors treating more patients.
‘It is only because of the necessary decisions we took in the budget that we are able to invest in GP surgeries, start tackling the 8am scramble and deliver better services for patients. The extra investment and reform this government is making, as part of its Plan for Change, will transform our NHS so it can once again be there for you when you need it.’
Dr Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and community services, added: ‘We know more needs to be done to improve patient access to general practice and this investment in over one thousand primary care premises will help do this.
‘Bringing GP premises up to a similar condition across England is important to improve patient experience of NHS services, while making primary care a better working environment as we seek to retain and recruit more staff.
‘It will also help to create additional space and extend the capacity of current premises as we improve access further and bring care closer to the communities where people live as part of the 10 Year Health Plan.’
Ruth Rankine, primary care director at the NHS Confederation, said: ‘GPs and their teams welcome this vital capital funding to modernise premises to deliver high quality care, closer to home, and fit for the 21st century.
‘Primary care is the front door of the health service and has been managing increasing demand, yet a historic lack of capital funding in estates has been one of the biggest barriers to improving productivity and creating buildings suitable for modern health care – with a fifth of GP estates pre-dating the NHS and half more than 30 years old.
‘If we are serious about shifting care from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital, then sustained investment in primary and community estates, equipment and technology is vital.’
Ongoing issue
The issue of estates has been ongoing across GP practices for a number of years. A major Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) report in 2023 found that estates were ‘inadequate’, concluding that the allied healthcare professional staff had ‘expanded greatly in recent years, without a parallel expansion of clinical space for them to work in’.
A white paper on workforce by Healthcare Leader’s publisher Cogora, published in February, also found that this was a common problem, with GPs reporting they had no room to recruit additional clinical or administrative staff. One managing partner said they had to convert their toilet and cupboard into a telephone consultation room to find extra space.
