General Practice Annual Electronic Self-Declaration (eDEC)

The information we ask for in the eDEC covers eight areas:

• practice details (such as name and address)
• practice staff
• practice premises and equipment
• practice services
• information about the practice and its procedures
• governance
• compliance with Care Quality Commission (CQC) registration requirements
• general practice (GP) information technology (IT)

Each section will already be populated with the answers the practice provided the previous year. The person completing the declaration needs to check these and update them if they have changed.

NHS England regional teams will use the information GP practices provide to check GP practices are fulfilling their contractual requirements.

Integrated Care Boards that commission primary care services under formal delegation from NHS England receive information from the annual electronic practice self-declaration that they need to support their delegated functions.

CQC use it to check that GP practices meet the CQC registration requirements, including complying with the law and in particular the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (Part 3) (as amended). The answers to the questions relating to CQC’s regulatory requirements will form part of their pre-inspection documentation, to reduce practice workload in line with our commitments in the General Practice Forward View.

The answers you give to some of the questions could be published on the NHS website, nhs.uk.

The answers that might be published are:

• practice services
• contact details such as the phone number, patient email address, and Facebook page
• information on wheelchair accessibility
• opening times
• the practice catchment area
• online appointment booking - the practice makes all appointments which do not require triage available for booking online, as well as in  person or via telephone

The answers you give to some of the questions will be available to anyone in the NHS and approved stakeholders with access to the Primary Care Indicators Dashboard.

The answers that might be made available are:

• use of NHS numbers (question 6F) – whether the practice makes sure a validated NHS number is used in all NHS clinical correspondence including referrals (except in exceptional circumstances where the NHS number is not known and can not be found out)
• GP IT – all answers to questions in Chapter 8 (questions 8D to 8Z and 8A1)
• the practice catchment area

Every GP practice should submit the eDEC as it is a mandatory return.

A senior member of practice staff, for example the practice manager or senior partner, should complete the eDEC. Only one person in each practice will be given the permissions to complete it. This is likely to be the same person who completes the K041b complaints collection.

The eDEC is submitted through the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS). 

You need to have:

• the correct permissions set by the data collections service
• an NHS Digital single sign-on (SSO) account

Most participants will already have these set up, and will get an invitation email. You should then follow the instructions in the email to access SDCS.

When you have been granted permissions, you will get an automated email including:

• the collection you have been registered to submit for
• the organisation or organisations you have been registered to submit for
• a link to SDCS

Click the link in the email to take you to the SDCS sign in screen, click the Sign in button on the top right hand corner and enter your:

• username - your registered email address that the email was sent to 
• password - the password for your single sign-in account

Once you have logged in to SDCS, follow these steps:

1. click the Submissions drop-down and select New.

eDEC should appear in the Collection field - if not, select it from the drop-down.

2. Click Create to go to the eDEC submission page.

Here you can see a list of GP practices that you have been registered to submit for, and the current status of each submission.

3. Click on the name of the practice to open the eDEC submission form main page.

From here you can click on sections to open them, view the fields and the entries given in the previous eDEC submission, and click Change to change these if you need to.

Some questions are marked as optional or voluntary. You do not have to answer these, but completing these questions will help us plan to better support GP practices in the future.

You can navigate in and out of sections as many times as you need to. Click Save and continue to save your progress, or Save and complete to save a section and mark it as complete on the main page.

Once you have made your submission, you will receive an on-screen reference number as confirmation. Please make a note of this number for your records as proof of submission. Note that your SDCS homepage will not update to reflect the submission status and will continue to display as 'Not Submitted', even after a successful submission has been made.

You will need to confirm your GP practice catchment area during the eDEC. Practices should visit the NHS GP Catchment Hub to access your catchment area.

Enter details for branch practices

If your practice has branch practices, you can enter details including opening hours in the practice details section in 1J. It's assumed that the answers you give in the main declaration will apply equally to branch practices. If there are differences, let us know the details in the supporting information section in question 10D.

Submitting your electronic declaration

When all the sections show as completed on the main page, you can submit your declaration.

If you need further support or experience technical difficulties, contact the National Service Desk via [email protected].