To think this budget will finish us off

[BurnoutGP]

I am a GP Partner of over 20 years. I am now senior partner for the last few years. We have seen year on year below inflation funding increase. With an explosion in demand and massive shift of work from secondary care. We have issues wirh recruitment.
Our partner income is shrinking year on year. We are now always overdrawn and this gets worse every month.
We just cannot soak up the MLW and NI without adequate resource uplift.
I think we will be done. I'm so very tired of the constant battle and the demand and anger while working "part time" 60hr weeks.
We will have to hand back our contract. And we wont be the only one. That will leave one surviving practice in my area.
I'm done.

I think this is a perfectly reasonable point to make. Theres also a point where someone says after everything instead of making 60k I’m now making 20k and it’s not worth the hassle anymore. Businesses can absorb some costs to a point but when you are running a business there does come a tipping point where it’s easier to just be employed.

I think there is a difference between someone taking home a bit less and running a business (which is often mad hours and stress) vs seeing your income massively changed with increased stress because you are now really having to watch the pennies.

Maybe people should make different life choices if the can only get jobs which mean they can’t afford the standard of living they want. Maybe they should support policies which will ease pressure on housing and living costs, Maybe they should support policies which support aspiration and hard work. It’s no use having a high minimum wage when there’s no one left to employ those people. It’s in no one’s interest when the business owner decides to sack the cleaner and do the job themselves. It’s in no one’s interest for the owner to take on a school leaver when they can take on an experienced hire for very little more. Why study hard and get into debt not earning for years when you won’t earn much more than someone straight out of school? Labour don’t want social mobility, they hate anyone with intelligence or drive.

Erm.

Seriously? If you calmed down for a minute and looked beyond your obvious hatred for labour you would realise all this is needed for long term stability and to return confidence. We could not continue to keep having short term budgets like the Tories kept spewing out. Don’t forget why we’re in this mess.

Vet insurance is insanely expensive , even for young animals whose owners have never claimed!

These ''big cartels'' are driving up prices.

Even my local small practice ''sold out'' to a group.

A qualified vet in the extended family has stopped working in Practice as she said it was ''all about money and not about the animals'' {she has retrained in a human sphere- all that expensive training and years of intense studying gone to waste}

Maybe at hers. Ours is independent so our process are cheaper - and we have nothing to do with insurance companies? Our insurance is for us against claims of negligence etc. there is a difference between PET insurance and VETS insurance. One is for your animals, one is for practices and is a legal requirement for us to operate and has no bearing on how much we charge you.

BUT when we sell then, prices will go up because it’ll be something like VetsNow who charge £300 for an OOH visit instead of us, who charge nothing.

VetsNow (the main company interested) also charge £40 a consultation near us - we charge £15.

GP's should be part of the NHS and paid a salary & costs of surgery borne by NHS.

GP's will jump at the chance to work for a decent wage and work a 40 hours week - won't they.

Also and I say this kindly - if any business owner cannot pay their staff a wage they can live on, then your business is a failure.

@User37482 - currently he earns less than a train drive. 25+ years experienced and one of the best in his field of speciality. If we do sell out, his salary will likely double so we’ll be better off for it - but he wasn’t a vet for the money (hence why our prices are comparatively low). It’s a nightmare. Doing the ‘right’ thing has screwed us in many ways

Ah, a post that says nothing other than “I hate the Tories - it’s all their fault” - is that you two tier Kier?

I don't think this applies here. In any ordinary line of business, the owners have a great deal more freedom. First of all they can set their prices. A GP surgery operates under a monopsony: there is a single purchaser of their services, and that purchaser dictates the price. The surgery cannot raise its revenue when its costs rise. Meanwhile, the terms of the contract, again dictated by the monopsony purchaser, places compulsory costs upon the surgery.

If a surgery goes bankrupt, while it may be the case that the partners are incompetent at business, what's increasingly likely is that the terms imposed by the purchaser are unfair.

Well when all those businesses fold, who it going to pay people this minimum wage? Maybe you want all employment to be via the state?

I guess you have no problem with the state have to top up all the wages of low paid workers to make them liveable because their employers choose not to?

Owning a simple dog or cat is so expensive {healthcare} unless one is eligible for 'free' vet care - a friend on 'sickness benefit' moaned about a £20 bill he was asked to pay by one of the veterinary charities.

£20!
That is nothing.

It's about £45 a consultation at my practice now-

Yet before it was sold, a Home Euthanasia for a Lurcher was £64 OOH. {Saturday Midday} - round the corner from the Practice.

I have insurance now as have heard of terrifying bills after accidents. {well over £10,000}

It's such a shame that it is going this way.

I used to never have insurance, but put money away in a pet account - that worked very well.

Wouldn't risk that now.

{Too many untrained dogs about that could hurt one's own.}

Oh I have a real issue with the cost of living crisis. But Labour have just made that a million times worse for the vast majority of people. If you can’t see that, there’s no hope.

Not to mention the local councils bankrupted by the SEND

https://www.countycouncilsnetwork.org.uk/send-deficits-risk-bankrupting-almost-three-quarters-of-englands-largest-councils-by-2027-with-government-urged-to-take-action/

Employers allowance for NI is also increasing from £5k to £10.5k which will help mitigate the impact of raising NI for the small employers.

My nhs dept has been on its knees for years due to no staff. It's horrendous. I'm the only full timer and I've been off all year with a completely useless hip that needs replacement, I can't walk on it or even sit. Waiting lists are so long I don't know if I'll ever get back to work.
The payrise was a bonus but I have not benefitted at all from the budget, not one penny.

As pp put well you are not getting the constraints of a GP practice

And as another pp put it’s incredibly shortsighted to think loss of jobs and businesses won’t impact people generally.

@oakleaffy i recognise your name from the doghouse! 😁

TBH it’s awful. DP really doesn’t want to sell - he’s not in it for the money - but equally he can’t afford to keep it going. And when it’s a choice between firing staff (some of whome he’s known for his entire 25+ year career) or selling out and passing costs onto the customer to try and save his colleagues job, it’s a no brainer.

We could have managed one of the tax increase - but not all three.

The very very small employers with 3/4 FT employees.

OP - I hear you. Not sure what the answer is. I do think the partnership model is particularly hard for this who have never worked in that industry to understand. Also the stress and pressure of running your own business is through the roof. I am completely responsible for 5 families not including my own and we take that incredibly seriously.

l wish people would stop spouting the above. We sell a product to a supermarket that most of you will buy on a weekly basis. The supermarkets know all our cost and base the wages factor on NMW. Wages is our second biggest cost. We have a contract that means when our costs go up (or down) the price we paid goes up (or down). So luckily I’m not worried about the increases as it will just be refelected in your supermarket shelf price.

furthermore, the jobs we do pay NMW for (and we do pay just slightly over as I would like to be able to pay more) we designed specifically to be 9-2. They attract school mums or local retired people who often do them for a few years whilst it suits their lifestyle.

Most small business owners are trying their very best to run a business. Please don’t be so horrible.

I was referring to your point on the cost of employers ni, you added supplier costs as an additional cost on top of these by saying plus, you will potentially have the additional supplier costs but you won’t have your own additional employer ni costs as well. Business rates for retail and hospitality will be reducing from 2026 unless you get small business rates relief anyway

“The uptick in minimum wage, plus the uptick in employer's national insurance contribution, plus all of that being passed on to us from our suppliers as well, is finishing us.”

£15 sounds incredibly cheap. My vet costs £50 for a consult and I dread to think what an ooh would be.

Are you insane, they've only been in power 3 months. Personally, I don't think history will look kindly on 15 years of the Tories and the mistake that was Brexit.