This is the third time that information about the PCN workforce has been collected. Around 91% of the PCNs had activated user accounts for the NWRS tool by 30 September 2020, and many of these users were already experienced with the GP practice-level submissions.
User feedback and other evidence suggest that the completion of the NWRS in March and June was adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the data coverage and completeness are still low, even for a new data collection. This should be taken into consideration when reviewing the figures.
Of the 1256 PCNs active during the third quarter of 2020:
- 91% had activated their NWRS user account by the end of September 2020 and 632 (50.3%), submitted data across 115 of the 135 CCGs, including 19 CCGs where every PCN submitted workforce data.
- Conversely, all PCNs in 20 CCGs failed to submit any valid workforce data.
- Fifteen PCNs provided information about pooled resource 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 headcount table (2b) and that the England-level headcounts presented in table 1b are based upon returns from 617 PCNs .
The PCN population is still evolving and the size of their workforces varies. 79% of the PCNs submitting information reported fewer than five FTE staff although it is not clear whether these low counts are because additional people have not yet been recruited, or whether their details could not be entered into the NWRS in time for the data extract.
282 PCNs provided details of their clinical directors of which nine were sharing the responsibility between a Medical Director (GP) and a Nursing or Direct Patient Care clinical director. A further 11 PCNs failed data validation as they did not include any hours for their clinical directors whose records were therefore excluded.
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.
The figures reported in this release are effective on 30 September 2020. However, because the data are not complete and the coverage is poor, users should be mindful that these figures may not be properly representative of the size of the PCN workforce.
As described in the Background and Data Sources sections in March's release and in the Background Data Quality section, some direct patient care staff may be employed by another NHS organisation and deployed to a PCN as "pooled resource". 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 (https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics). Table 1c in the Bulletin Tables provides England-level FTE counts for pooled roles and the percentage contribution these pooled 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).