GP collective action - summary
Starting from May 2026, GPC England will be announcing one new action per month details of which can be found below. So far GPC are calling for:
You can read about the background to the campaign here.
Collective Action for Practices in June
From 1 June, BMA GPC England is urging GP partnerships and practices across England to take part in a further collective action. BMA GPC England is asking practices to begin a new action alongside the ongoing action on DSAs (practice data sharing agreements) launched last month. During June, practices are being asked to remove or ignore any non-contractual medicines optimisation software and amend acute prescribing choices where appropriate, including where these may fall outside the remit of the ICB formulary.
Practices in Lancashire and South Cumbria will be aware there is a Medicines Optimisation LES offered and in Cumbria there is the Medicines LES.
Further information:
May 2026 GP collective action – Next Steps on Data Sharing
Central to the ongoing collective action for May remains the request that practices send a template letter to their local system to assess each existing DSA the practice is currently signed up to, while indicating you will examine voluntary secondary use data sharing agreements (DSAs) from May 2026.
With many practices now having received responses from their ICB, GPC England has drafted a second template for practices to use where they have received a stock response from their ICB – this response will contain an early paragraph starting ‘As you note’ and a header ‘The limited ICB role.’
Given the range of responses practices will have received, it is not possible to generate a template that works universally, however the document that GPC have produced should speak to the fullest range of replies. Practices should carefully consider each part and determine whether or not to include it in any response they provide to their ICB. The template can be found here. Please get this sent off when you receive a response. Taking part in this action does not breach your contract and will help practices to stay safe and put pressure on the Government to secure safeguards for practices.
Read about the 26/27 contract changes and BMA GPC dispute with Government