I am writng to all colleagues in relation to the additional uplift that will apply to the ARRS allocation for PCNs following the Governments acceptance of the 2025/26 DDRB recommendations.
Collegues should note there is a separate LMC update relating to the Global Sum and SFE locum reimbursement arrangements, including for ARRS reimbursed GPs, which has been circulated.
In this context, colleagues should note there was a common public sector pay assumption of 2.8% within the GP Contract Agreement 2025/26, although the Governments acceptance of the 4% uplift means a supplementary sum is being applied to the Contract. An additional 4% is being applied to the £186 million portion of the budget initially earmarked for GPs in ARRS for 2025/26: this is a somewhat hypothetical exercise because all the ARRS allocation can now be used to reimburse GPs if a PCN wished to do so, and subject to existing HR arrangements. However, prior to this decision, this uplift to this proportion of the budget is in line with DDRB recommendations.
This means the maximum ceilings for GP salaries that can be claimed in the ARRS will rise by 4% meaning the maximum reimbursable rate is now £110148 [£113057 with London
Weighting].
In terms of other ARRS colleagues who are on Agenda for Change [AfC] pay scales, taking into acount the 2.8% pay assumption , the remaining [non-GP] element of the ARRS allocation has been uplifted by 0.8% to conform to the announced 3.6% uplift to AfC pay scales.
The Enhanced Access Service payment has been assumed to be a GP-led service, although obviously other colleagues do contribute to delivering Enhanced Access appointments. Based on this assumption, the Enhanced Access budget has been uplifted by 4%.
This means the following calculation has changed; such that the ARRS roles reimbursement sum will be calculated as being: £26.848 x the PCN Contracted Weighted Population at 1st January 2025 [Para 7.3.2 of the Part B Guidance to the Network Contract DES and all subsequent references].
Colleagues should also note that the payments made to ARRS employed GPs not employed by member practices (covered in Annex E of the revised PCN DES specification] are outside the individual PCN ARRS allocation and if claimed will be funded centrally.
I hope this background is helpful.
Dr Julius Parker, Chief Executive