ARRS funding has ‘ostracised’ sessional GPs amidst 2% locum rates falls, NASGP reported this week. NASGP chair Dr Richard Fieldhouse made a call for support for GPs in the trade title for general practice, GP Online.
NASGP data reveals that NASGP members on LocumDeck, the NASGP’s platform, saw rates dip from an average of £91 an hour in January 2025 to £89 in April 2025.
The NASGP also found that the number of sessions available for GP locums fell significantly in the 12 months to April 2025.
Analysing this data, sessions that had been booked directly (using LocumDeck’s ‘click-and-book’) feature by practices remained stable, whereas for GPs where practices still used WhatsApp groups or jobs boards to arrange work, the number of sessions dropped by 40% over this same period.
Dr Fieldhouse said: “We have now been recording ‘live’ session and rate data for five years, witnessing the behaviour and trends of how practices hire GP locums.
“Average locum rates appear to track a three year sine wave with an upward trend, currently increasing since September 2024.
“The most significant shift in recent years is how practices hire locum GPs. Instead of using job boards and WhatsApp groups, there’s a growing trend towards direct, ‘click-and-book’ methods. This approach has risen from 10% of all sessions in 2020 to 40% nationwide, with some counties like Suffolk seeing 90% of sessions booked this way.
“While we still see that our platform LocumDeck helps GPs find work in troubled times, we will continue to call for greater support and funding for the sector to cope with the widespread problem of sessional GP underemployment.”