Have your say on new Council priorities

December 2025

Help shape our College’s future, share your insight as we set Council priorities to guide policy, strengthen practice, and influence healthcare.

By Victoria Tzortziou Brown, Chair of RCGP Council

Victoria-new-hub

Shaping our future together

We want the College’s work to be guided by the people at its heart, our members. As we set out our direction for the next three years, we are developing a set of Council priorities that will steer our efforts in shaping policy, strengthening professional practice, and influencing the wider healthcare landscape. To do this well, we need your insight.

Our priorities will centre on what is essential for ensuring general practice can meet the needs of the patients and communities we serve. They will reflect the support you need, both from the College and from local and national decision makers. These priorities will guide our policy influencing, CPD, e-Learning, and our education and training programmes.

Before we finalise the priorities in March 2026, we are inviting you to shape them. There is a series of questions in the member survey, launched on 8 December 2025. You should have received an email through the email address registered with your membership account. If you haven’t received the survey and think you should have, please contact membership.programmes@rcgp.org.uk.

We will also be gathering further insight from members through a series of engagement opportunities over the coming months.

We want to hear your views on the proposed themes, and the specific areas within these priorities that you feel deserve focus.

Starting as we mean to go on

Across all priorities, we will deepen engagement with members by listening, involving, and co-producing solutions. Council, faculties, academics, Registrars and frontline GPs will shape the direction together, ensuring the College reflects the profession’s collective insight, innovation, and expertise.

We will also work closely with a wide range of stakeholders and representatives including members of the public, providers, governments, policymakers, policy experts, academic researchers and advocacy organisations to ensure our priorities are informed, credible and aligned with the needs of the communities we serve.

The draft priorities

  • The GP role: Define & champion the unique role of GPs in the modern healthcare system
  • MDTs: Develop MDT working principles, advocate their adoption, and support members to implement in practice
  • Value of general practice: Define & champion the value of general practice in future models of care
  • Standards of general practice: Influence standards on access & continuity; support members to meet these
  • Community models: Define general practice’s role in community care models and strengthen member support
  • GP leadership: Advocate for GP representation in system planning, & support members taking on leadership
  • Integrated working: Strengthen integrated working guidance across secondary, primary & community settings

  • Workload: Support members in reducing workload & advocate for policies to help
  • GP wellbeing: Identify & promote wellbeing & burnout prevention initiatives.
  • GP workforce numbers: Identify target GP workforce numbers to influence national modelling
  • GP training: Work with stakeholders to increase GP training capacity.
  • Recruitment: Shape policy & strengthen member support on recruitment & employment
  • Retention: Shape policy & strengthen member support on retention.
  • Return to practice: Shape policy & strengthen member support on return to practice
  • Fulfilling careers: Support & advocate for flexible careers including leadership, research & more
  • Extended roles: Expand member support for developing specialist skills in specific clinical areas

  • System interoperability: Promote improved interoperability across all record systems
  • Secure data use: Advocate for national standards for data-sharing & support GPs in navigating these
  • AI standards: Support guidance on & regulation of AI use in general practice
  • GP data controllership: Define the GPs data controllership role & provide related support for GPs
  • AI & digital tools development: Influence tools to prioritise quality care, patient experience & reduced workload
  • AI & digital tool adoption: Share best-practice examples & provide member support on adoption
  • Research on AI & digital tools: Strengthen research to generate evidence on the new technologies

  • Over-medicalisation: Champion evidence-based approaches to reduce over-medicalisation; influence policy & support members
  • Prevention & self-care: Shape initiatives for supporting people in improving & managing their own health
  • Greener practice: Advocate for investment in sustainability of premises & support members
  • Equitable healthcare research: Advocate for & strengthen evidence for equitable, sustainable care
  • Equitable policy making: Influence health policies that promote equity, e.g. review of funding formulae
  • Inclusive environments: Support members in fostering supportive professional environments
  • Address unwarranted variation: Promote guidance & best practice to reduce unwarranted variation in care
  • Support development of primary care internationally: Promote high-quality primary care in other countries

We would also like to understand how members want to be engaged in the delivery of the Council’s priority work and, preferred ways to communicate. For example, this could be through events, virtual webinars, emails, surveys.

Please complete the member survey to give us your views.

If you have any questions about the Council priorities member engagement programme, please contact priorities@rcgp.org.uk.