GP Reimbursement Scheme 2026/27: How Much Is Your Practice Entitled To

Tara Humphrey
May 27
5 min read

At THC Primary Care, we provide resources for primary care network leaders, and the focus of this blog is on the GP Reimbursement Scheme, which was updated in May, affecting the GMS contract.

This blog gives you two things to work with.

A free calculator that works out what your practice or network is entitled to. And, in section two, a checklist of the other May changes, so you can work through what the rest of the guidance says, decide what it means for your practice, and make sure nothing is missed.

On 20 May 2026, NHS England published supplementary guidance on the 2026/27 GP contract changes (PRN02423), along with other updates relating to the Capacity and Access Payment, RSV vaccination, patient access and same-day access. The headline change for networks is the practice level GP reimbursement scheme, set out in section 2.2 of the guidance.

The supplementary guidance does not introduce new requirements. It explains the intent behind changes already announced in the 24 February 2026 contract letter, and most of them sit in the core practice contract rather than the network contract. This post covers the lot, but in two parts.

The first is details on the GP reimbursement scheme, which will be most pertinent to primary care network leaders.

The second is everything else in the May guidance. The patient access and same-day access changes, RSV, the cancer screening data sharing, and the rest. This part is primarily directed to practice management, but PCN leaders may still find it helpful to be aware of this information.

Section 1 What is the GP Reimbursement Scheme, and how does it work?

The scheme runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, and the funding remains in the core GP contract on an ongoing basis thereafter.

Each practice's entitlement is £4.57 multiplied by its adjusted population as at 1 January 2026, and is embedded in baseline allocations.

Practices can claim three things:

A new salaried GP.
Extra sessions from existing salaried GPs.
The continuation of a salaried GP whose post was previously funded through the Capacity and Access Payment or the PCN Test Sites programme.

For a salaried GP, the claim is the lower of actual cost or £152,900 (£155,698 with London weighting).

For additional sessions, it is the lower of actual cost per hour or £90.61 (£92.27 with London weighting).

Practices over 3,500 patients per GP contact their Integrated Care Board (ICB) before accessing the funding. Claims go through CQRS Local.

With the scheme set out, here are the questions worth working through.

If your network was funding GPs through the Capacity and Access Payment, what options do you have now?

This is the most common position, and the guidance handles it directly.

If one of your practices was funding a GP through the Capacity and Access Payment or the test sites programme, that GP can carry on. The post does not have to end. What changes is how it is paid for, and there are three routes depending on the situation.

If the GP works in one practice, that practice funds them through its own reimbursement entitlement.

If the GP works across more than one practice, the practices can transfer entitlements to each other, with confirmation in writing to the ICB, so the cost is shared.

And if it suits the network better, GPs, along with Band 5 and Band 6 practice nurses, funded through those sources, can move into ARRS instead, where the funding exists. This is a separate exemption introduced in May.

The question is which of these best fits your network.

Does the entitlement cover what was being spent?

The £4.57 per adjusted population is a fixed envelope per practice.

The entitlement varies by practice, so it is worth checking each one. Some will have more than they were getting through the network, some less. Our calculator works this out for a single practice or across the whole network.

However, the scheme is about increasing GP capacity, so any practice above 3,500 patients per full-time equivalent GP must speak to the ICB before accessing the funding.

The guidance is explicit that this is a supportive touchpoint, not a barrier, and not a reason to hold back. The conversation is meant to understand what is driving that ratio and what other support the practice might need.

The useful thing a network leader can do is know which practices are over the line and prompt that conversation early, so it runs alongside the claim rather than delaying it.

Use our calculator below to work out your practice or PCN entitlement.

What are the options where you cannot recruit?

The scheme leads with the employment of a new salaried GP, but that is not the only route. This matters in areas where recruitment is genuinely hard.

The same funding covers additional sessions from GPs already in the practice. So a partner or salaried GP taking on more sessions can be reimbursed for up to 9 sessions a week.

Funding does not cover locum work in the usual sense. A locum can only be funded if they take an employment contract with the practice.

So, where recruiting a new GP is not realistic, there are still two workable options within the same entitlement.

Could a practice free up ARRS budget by switching how a GP is funded?

Here is one worth thinking through if you have a practice funding a GP through ARRS.

That practice could switch the funding source. Instead of paying for the GP through ARRS, it funds the same GP through its own practice-level reimbursement entitlement, the £4.57 per adjusted population that now comes to the practice anyway. The GP carries on exactly as before.

What that does is free up the ARRS budget the GP was using. The network can then allocate the released budget to another role.

No new cost to the practice, because the entitlement was always coming to them. Same GP, different funding source, and a freed-up slice of ARRS to use elsewhere.

How much it frees up depends on where you are starting from. A network that has already committed most of its budget will have less room than the idea suggests.

But for a practice in this position, it is a benefit worth modelling rather than a problem to solve.

What is the network's role now that the money sits with practices?

The funding lands at the practice level and stays there, so the PCN no longer holds it centrally.

That does not stop practices choosing to pool. Where a shared service was working well, practices can still agree to combine entitlements through the transfer route to keep it running. Where it was not, this is a natural point to rethink.

Either way, the decision now sits with the practices together, and a network leader is well placed to convene that conversation rather than assume the shared model either continues automatically or ends.