Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to increase the level of funding available for new GP premises in (a) rural areas and (b) West Dorset constituency.

The Government is committed to delivering a National Health Service that is fit for the future and recognises the importance of strategic, value for money investments in capital projects. We recently announced schemes which will benefit from the £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund to deliver upgrades this financial year to more than a thousand general practice (GP) surgeries across England.

At the local level, the Dorset Integrated Care Board (ICB) is responsible for deciding how the NHS budget for its area, including the West Dorset constituency, is spent and for allocating funding according to local priorities, such as new GP surgeries.

The Dorset ICB has been provisionally allocated the following amounts from capital programmes and operational capital for 2025/26:

• £34.3 million from our Constitutional Standards Recovery Fund;
• £9.2 million from our Estates Safety Fund;
• £1.4 million from our Primary Care Utilisation Fund; and
• £78.9 million in operational capital funding.