‘Our plan for patients’, announced in September 2022, outlined how we will bolster general practice teams with additional staff, give patients more options when they need care, meet oral health needs and increase access to National Health Service dental care, including in rural areas. We acknowledge that some areas of the country are experiencing recruitment and retention issues with regard to NHS dentistry and GPs and we are taking steps to address these.
The Pharmacy Access Scheme supports access in areas where there are fewer pharmacies by financially supporting those pharmacies. In 2016, the Government launched the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme, which has attracted hundreds of doctors to train in hard to recruit locations, including many rural areas, by providing a one-off financial incentive of £20,000.
In the Penrith and The Border constituency it is estimated that there was a 38.4% increase in total full-time equivalent clinical staff working in general practice in September 2022 compared to September 2019 (published data: General practice workforce estimates by constituency: 2019 to 2022).
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