Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Royal College of General Practitioners' report entitled Fit for the Future: Reshaping general practice infrastructure in England, published in May 2023, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his Department's polices of that report's finding that almost three in four members that requested funding to upgrade their premises in the last year were unsuccessful in obtaining that funding.

We want general practitioners (GPs) to deliver the best quality of care to patients and will continue our work to assess what is needed to enable them to deliver services effectively in GP premises.

The Government has allocated over £4 billion annually in capital funding to systems to invest in maintaining the National Health Service estate and address safety issues. Improvements to existing GP premises can be financed by bidding for NHS England funding or self-funded by the GP practice, including borrowing capital. Often works are funded by a combination of these two options.

The NHS (General Medical Services) Premises Costs Directions 2013 permit grant awards of up to 66% of the total value of the improvement scheme; practices are expected to meet the remaining costs.