Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of Integrated Care Board funding levels on GP recruitment and retention in West Dorset constituency.

General practitioner (GP) retention initiatives are funded though System Development Funds within Primary Care Transformation budgets at an integrated care board (ICB) level. This year, within the NHS Dorset ICB, that funding has supported:

• a fellowship programme offered across all staff groups, with most successful candidates being from within the GP staff group and with one applicant being from West Dorset;
• a coaching and mentoring programme, with 14 GPs having signed up;
• Lantum, a locum platform used across Dorset; and
• funding for the General Practice Alliance to represent the voice of GPs and to carry out initiatives that support the sustainability of GPs in Dorset.

This year, the NHS Dorset ICB also received a one-off funding grant for health and wellbeing within GPs from NHS England. This funding is being used to pilot an Employee Assistance Programme, recruit a Social Prescriber fellow to support international medical graduates, and provide health and wellbeing training. An NHS Dorset and Dorset GP Education Centre taskforce to increase GP training placements has identified West Dorset as an opportunity for growth.