Dr Richard Vautrey has called for ‘real and meaningful support’ for general practices as they continue to play a vital role in the country’s pandemic recovery.

The leader of Britain’s GPs is to speak to grassroots GPs from across the four nations in a virtual conference and will say that the past 14 months have tested ‘every GP team and individual like never before’.

The BMA GP committee UK chair will highlight the historic workforce and workload crises in general practice that have now been exacerbated by the pandemic, and call for governments to act to act to address them.

He will say: “We don’t just need our patients’ understanding, we have often had that throughout this last year, we need governments to act. Not just with letters of thanks, which have been welcome, but with real and meaningful supportive action. We don’t just need short term fixes, but a long-term commitment to investment and development of general practice, to properly redress the years that have left us as we are. We cannot allow another crisis to hit us without being better prepared.”

Vautrey’s address comes as: GP appointment data reveals that there were almost five million more appointments in England in March than in February, and almost three million more than there were in March 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. Workforce figures also show that the NHS in England lost more than 900 GP partners between March 2020 and March this year.

A BMA survey found that a third of GPs said they were more likely to retire early following the pandemic and one in five said they were more likely to leave the NHS for another career, citing workload and their own health and well-being as the primary reason.