GP leaders have described the 0.28 per cent overall rise in GP contract payments, which is intended to deliver a 1 per cent pay rise for GPs in 2014/15, as a “kick in the teeth”.

The Treasury accepted the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Board (DDRB) recommendations to increase overall funding for practices by just 0.28 per cent, which it said would deliver a below inflation pay rise of 1 per cent but GP leaders have said that the funding increase will not deliver the promised rise.

According to a spokesman for the General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC), the overall funding increase is nowhere near enough to deliver the 1 per cent pay rise.

The DDRB based its advice on three key factors, which were staff pay costs, the 1 per cent intended rise and inflation and found that a 0.28 per cent increase in funding should be enough to deliver the 1 per cent rise, even in the face of rising inflation, because it estimated that staff costs had dropped by 1.4 per cent.

The GPC had asked for a net rise in line with inflation, currently 1.9 per cent, taking account of expenses, having warned that an insufficient funding increase would risk exacerbating the primary care workforce crisis and undermining services, but NHS England called for pay rises to be capped at 1 per cent, in line with government policy on public sector pay.

Separately, official figures released last year for 2011/12 showed a sixth consecutive year of falling pay for GPs, with an average 1.1 per cent fall before tax after expenses. Meanwhile, other data showed that practices spent more than 60 per cent of their income on practice expenses, up from 56.5 per cent in 2004/5.