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 that Integrated Care Boards are able to support the revenue consequences of primary care estate expansions enabled by capital investment.

We recently announced schemes which will benefit from the £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund (PCUMF) to deliver upgrades this financial year to more than a thousand general practice (GP) surgeries across England.

These schemes will create additional clinical space within existing building footprints to enable practices to see more patients, boost productivity, and improve patient care. By working within existing footprints there will be no additional revenue costs associated to the work funded by the PCUMF

This will directly address the issue of staff who cannot work at full capacity due to space limitations and will enable practices to offer more appointments with their existing workforce through better use of space. The Government has already hired more than 1,500 extra GPs and announced an £889 million funding boost, the biggest for the sector in years.

To ensure good management of public money, the schemes that have been selected will of course be subject to final business case approvals and due diligence. Integrated care boards and GP federations will not be able to unilaterally realign the schemes which have already been agreed, however if an individual surgery is not able to proceed, then local leaders will select another priority scheme to utilise the funding.