The LMC appreciates how desperately hard all GPs and practices are working to cope with the coronavirus pandemic and its fall out, including the need to very quickly move to radically transform models of care delivery.
The crisis has also, inevitably, massively impinged on LMC workload, and in order to do our best to continue to provide the responsive and, hopefully, high quality service you deserve, it has become necessary to considerably increase our staffing hours in order to deal with the current hugely increased volume of requests for advice and support coming into the LMC office, together with various other demands for LMC representation and input as part of the local pandemic response. This therefore means that we sadly have no choice but to increase the 2020 levy that we had budgeted for at the start of the year.
Our levy had been set at 30p per patient for the year, (7.5p per quarter) but the changes we’ve needed to bring in during the pandemic upheaval means that we now must increase the levy to 8.5p per quarter for this quarter, and review whether we will need to maintain it at 8.5p for the subsequent quarter. We are optimistic that we should be able to reduce the levy back down to 7.5p for the final quarter of the year, if not sooner, meaning that the total annualised levy for the year should not rise above 32p. I’m sure you will understand however that, as with much else, there is still uncertainty on this.
Happily the other side of the coin is that, as reported to you a few weeks ago, the additional voluntary levy, which the LMC pays to the GPDF to fund its annual grant to the BMA in order to support GPC activity, has been further reduced down to 3p per patient in 2020. This further reduction in the GPDF levy, following previous reductions from a high of 6p a couple of years ago, has been brought about through a combination of strategic refocus, shrewd budgeting and tough negotiation by the GPDF with the BMA.
Therefore even in the above worst case scenario of the statutory/administrative levy having to be increased for two quarters, the total amount payable by practices in combined statutory and voluntary levies in 2020 should still hopefully be the same as last year and lower than it was a couple of years ago.
We should like to thank you for your sterling work caring for your patients during this time of unprecedented crisis and your continued support for the work of the LMC.