Following on from NHS England’s announcement on the GP contract for 2025/26 earlier this year, here’s a timely reminder on three key requirements taking effect from 1st October 2025.

The GP contract for 2025/26 requires every practice in England to ensure the following measures have been implemented by the October deadline:

• Online consultation tools must be switched on for the duration of core hours
• You and Your General Practice (YYGP) must be on practice websites
• GP Connect Access Record (HTML and Structured) and Update Record must be enabled within GP Practice clinical systems

Here are the 3 key requirements in more detail:

1. As part of NHS England’s commitment to ending the ‘8am scramble’ for patient appointments, from 1 October 2025 practices will be required to keep their online consultation tool open for the duration of core hours for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests. This will be subject to necessary safeguards in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online. Guidance should be displayed on practice websites and reflected in the wording of the You and Your General Practice (YYGP) patient charter (see below).
    
2. Practices will be also required to ensure the functionality in GP Connect is enabled which:
   • allows read only access to patients’ care records. This will apply to other NHS commissioned providers for direct patient care and also to providers of private healthcare where the private provider obtains explicit permission from the patient to access their NHS GP care record and they are providing direct care to the patient.
   • allows Community Pharmacy registered professionals to send consultation summaries into the GP practice workflow – which will reduce administrative burden for general practice teams.
      
3. NHS England has published a patient charter (You and Your GP Practice – YYGP) which sets out the standards a patient can expect from their practice, as outlined in the GP contract. The charter needs to be published on practice websites. This will improve transparency for patients and make it easier for them to know how practices will handle their request and what to expect from their practice. 

More information on the changes to the GP Contract 2025/26 can be found here.

Additional guidance on You and Your General Practice (YYGP) can be found here.