NHS Confederation responds to RCN warning on primary care nursing pay

In response to a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warning that thousands of nursing staff working in general practice in England risk missing out on a pay rise, Ruth Rankine, director of the NHS Confederation’s primary care network, said:

“Nurses in general practice play a vital role in providing care to patients yet do not benefit from the same terms and conditions as their peers working in the wider NHS. If the government is serious about improving access to general practice and managing demand across the rest of the NHS, then it needs to reward general practice nurses fairly.

“While extra investment has been awarded to cover the pay increase for nurses on Agenda for Change contracts, this has not extended to primary care, which has created a two-tier payment model for the profession.

“Primary care providers have been unable to afford this salary from within their existing budgets which have not increased sufficiently to keep up with inflation and cost of living pressures. If this problem continues it is likely to do untold damage to the ability of primary care providers to recruit and retain their nursing staff, at a time when these services are seeing more patients than since before the pandemic.

“This could then have a domino effect on the range of services they can provide for their patients, including extended opening hours and vaccination clinics, inevitably leading to even more pressures across hospitals and other parts of the NHS.”