Small rural GP surgeries are at risk - Farron

Small rural GPs surgeries in Cumbria are losing funding every year as the government phases out its 'Minimum Practice Income Guarantee'. The latest tranche of funding is being removed this month. Tim Farron says that this risks the future of those surgeries unless government acts quickly.

This is the fourth year of a phasing out of 'MPIG' which will see practices such as Coniston losing significant funding.

Tim Farron has written to the Chancellor of Exchequer saying that just 1% of the £100 million he announced to help larger GP surgeries in his budget could secure the future for surgeries such as Coniston.

Pressure from Tim and local health campaigners has already led to the release of a guidance note for "GP Practices serving atypical populations". This note from NHS England proposes that local commissioners should bear in mind the needs of small rural surgeries. However, crucially, it doesn't give the commissioners any money to back this up with.

Tim said: "The government has given small rural GP surgeries like ours a heavy dose of warm words in recent years, but not the vital injection of actual funds that would make those words mean anything! Does the government want small rural GP surgeries to survive or not? If they do, then just £1million across the whole of England would probably solve the problem - I have written to the Chancellor to urge him to make that money available now."

Tim submitted a private members bill to Parliament calling for the establishment of a Strategic Small Surgeries Fund to support GP surgeries in places like ours. The bill made it past the first stage of parliamentary approval but was then killed off when the Government did not give it time for debate.