Primary Care Network Workforce, 31 March 2023

Information about the PCN workforce has been published for every quarter since March 2020. By March 2023, around 99% of PCNs had activated user accounts on the National Workforce Reporting Service (NWRS) tool, which is the system used to collect data on the PCN and General Practice workforces. Although many of these users were already experienced with the GP practice-level submissions, this was a new collection early in 2020 and completion rates were initially very low.

This is still a relatively new collection and the completeness and coverage of the data are still improving. When we first collected data on the PCN Workforce in March 2020, we received valid data from 15% of active PCNs.  User feedback and other evidence suggest that the NWRS completion rates by PCN users were adversely affected early in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. For September 2020, 50.3% of active PCNs had submitted data. This figure has risen each quarter and by March 2023, was 98.1%. We continue to work with PCNs and other stakeholders to improve the data quality. Changing data coverage and completeness should be taken into consideration when reviewing the figures.

Of the 1,263 PCNs active during March 2023:

• 99% had activated their NWRS user account by March 2023. 
• 1,239 (98.1%), across all of the 106 sub-ICB locations, had submitted data including 91 sub-ICB locations where every PCN submitted workforce data.
• 8 PCNs provided information about contracted services only; as we cannot determine how many people are working in the applicable roles, this means that these PCNs show a count of zero in the PCN-level headcount Tables (1b, 2b and 4b) and the England-level headcounts presented in Tables 1b, 2b and 4b are based upon returns from 1,231 PCNs.

The PCN population is still evolving, the size of their respective workforces varies, and from their inception, there was always an expectation that the PCN workforce would grow over time as new roles were introduced. For example, in December 2020, 62% of the PCNs submitting workforce information reported fewer than five FTE staff, while by March 2023 this figure had fallen to 6.7%.  Initially, targeted funding focused on the recruitment of Clinical Pharmacists and Social Prescribing Link Workers, and additional roles have gradually been introduced.

In March 2023, 786 PCNs provided details of their clinical directors, of which 23 were sharing the responsibility between a Medical Director (GP) and a Nursing or Direct Patient Care clinical director. Clinical director submissions from a further 22 PCNs failed data validation as no working hours were provided, and the affected records had to be excluded.

The figures reported in this release are effective on 31 March 2023. However, because the data and coverage are not complete, users should be mindful that these figures may not be properly representative of the size of the PCN workforce.

There have been increases in headcounts and FTE counts for the majority of job roles over the past year. However, comparisons between periods are not advised since it is likely that, as a greater proportion of active PCNs begin to engage with the NWRS collection tool, staff who were in post in previous months are being recorded for the first time in the most recent month. As a result, increases in staffing levels are likely to be smaller than they would seem if making year-on-year comparisons, as the increases are likely to be distributed across the whole span of the publication series.  In addition, we advise you not to make comparisons between months, but only on a year-on-year basis, as figures are affected by seasonal variation.

The PCNs are still developing; a small number of GP practices have changed their PCN membership at some point since July 2019, while a few practices left their original PCN without joining another. In addition, some PCNs that were created during 2019 or later have subsequently merged into a single organisation while others have divided to form several new PCNs. For this reason, the count of PCNs varies between reporting periods.

Some direct patient care staff may be employed by another organisation and deployed to a PCN as "contracted service". Up to the September 2020 release, these roles were described in this publication as "pooled resource" and are described in the Background and Data Sources sections in March 2020's release and in the Background Data Quality section. In such cases, it is possible that these staff are also counted in other Official Statistics, such as those for the NHS Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) workforce.  Table 3 in the Bulletin Tables provides England-level FTE counts for contracted services and the percentage contribution these contracted staff make to the overall FTE total shown in Table 1a to help you to understand and quantify the potential scale of double-counted staff.

Please refer to the Background Data Quality section for more general information about the PCN data quality and the National Workforce Reporting System (NWRS).