Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure the adequacy of primary care estates to support workforce expansion.

It is the responsibility of the integrated care boards to ensure that the National Health Service estate is fit for purpose, in order to meet the needs of the local population.

At the Autumn Budget, we announced our commitment to deliver 250 Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHCs) through the NHS Neighbourhood Rebuild Programme. This will deliver NHCs through a mixture of refurbishments to expand and improve sites over the next three years and new-build sites opening in the medium term. The first 120 NHCs are due to be operational by 2030 and will be delivered through public private partnerships and public capital.

The Government is providing £426 million over four years through the Utilisation and Modernisation Fund, upgrading general practice (GP) estate and supporting delivery of 40 to 50 NHCs this Parliament through refurbishment of existing buildings.

In Spring we will publish the 10 Year Workforce Plan, which will set out the high-level vision for how we can prepare our workforce to deliver the three shifts set out in the 10-Year Health Plan.

The Government has committed to training thousands more GPs, which will support the delivery of the left shift and focus more resources in the community. Our work on this has already started, with the number of available GP training places increasing by an additional 250 places to 4,250 for 2025/26 and again to 4,500 for 2026/27.