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 maintain the level of out-of-hours GP cover in Surrey.

Evening and weekend general practice appointments are routinely available across the country to enable patients to find appointments at a time convenient to them, with millions of patients having already benefitted from this.

Care UK is the provider for both the Out of Hours (OOH) and the 111 service for Surrey. Since April 2019 NHS North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has been the lead commissioner for OOH general practitioner (GP) services for North West Surrey, Surrey Downs, Guildford and Waverley and East Surrey CCGs.

There are eight Primary Care Centres in Surrey that are involved in the provision of OOH services.

The Woking Out of Hours primary care centre provides OOH services on Monday-Friday 19:00-23:59 and 08:00-23:59 at weekends and bank/public holidays. This service has not changed since the new contract began at the end of March 2019. There are no plans to change the current contracted hours of opening or operation for Woking.

North West Surrey CCG has advised that the following steps have been put in place to maintain the level of OOH GP cover in Surrey:

- Direct booking being made available for extended access hubs through 111;

- Ongoing recruitment/pro-active skill mix, including GPs, advanced nurse practitioners, urgent care practitioners, and dental and mental health nurses;

- The NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, allowing patients to be referred to pharmacists for minor ailments;

- Pharmacists able to issue prescriptions and repeat prescriptions out of hours;

- Collaborative working with the GP federation and primary care networks; and

- Looking at activity versus productivity going into winter and whether extra resources will be needed.

NHS England is undertaking a national review of access to general practice services, to improve patient access and reduce unwarranted variation in experience. The NHS Long Term Plan made a clear commitment to the future of general practice, with primary and community care set to receive at least £4.5 billion more a year by 2023/24 in real terms. This was followed by the five-year GP contract framework, which will provide greater financial security and certainty for practices to plan ahead.