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.

Maybe that’s the plan. Communism by the back door. Control of the people.

Hospitality tend to have a lot of staff but working part time not lots of full time employees although of course there can be exception. , The extra ni due to the decrease of the secondary threshold from £9100 to £5000 works out to £615 per annum for an employee so for this element of the ni increase the increase in employment allowance from £5000 to £10500 covers 17 staff. There is then extra ni to what there would have been previously at 1.5% for any staff on over £9100, £9100 is 14 hours a week at minimum wage. The increase in employers ni is going to effect very few independent pubs specifically. Increase in nnw may be more problematic.

Maybe history won’t be impressed with either government. I am appalled by this one on a weekly basis, just as I was by the last one.

Topping up a single person working a full week is a different proposition to topping up the same for someone that additionally has children.
Lots of public sector roles require top ups so what's your argument there?

It sounds horrendous running a business these days with all the bureaucracy involved yet creaky online government systems. As a country it needs to be much easier to get things up and running.

This exactly. I work as a Psychological Therapist. My wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and I’ve been to university 3 times and done about 5 years worth of training. With my student loan, and other expenses, I’m literally living pay check to paycheck. It’s miserable.

Oh get real! Yes, perhaps they should - but it is less than a tiny drop in the ocean when you look at the dire financial straits so many universities are in now and have been in for a while. This is just stupid knee-jerk reactionism to avoid thinking for more than a few seconds about how a university works and how many people one employs.

So many universities are going to go bust. Do you realise the knock-on implications if just one goes under? Quite apart from the thousands of job losses at every level from cleaner to professor, look at all the small businesses that rely on the university without being run BY the university - private shops and cafes on campus. Cleaning services. University GP practice. Sports facilities. Pubs, cafes and small shops around the campus periphery or in the town centre that rely on student income. Rely on students having jobs in those places too, come to think of it. Landlords who solely rent to students. etc, etc.

I think employment allowance is doubling from
5k to 10k.

@KTheGrey it is. He/we kept costs down as much as we can, in part aided by the fact the practice does a fair bit of very complex surgery (particular for ocular work) which brings in a lots of clients and my DP does consultations for other practices. We’re also one of the few vets who allow payment plans for expensive treatment (for people who can’t afford to stump up thousands or even hundreds in a day).

But we’ll have to sell with these tax increases and now prices will go up, payment plans will probably stop and the only people affected will be our customers - not us or my DPs colleagues.

It’s awful.

This. The GP's i know earn huge salaries (and im not saying they shouldn't be well paid) and most seem to work part time because they can earn enough in 3 days. Most i know are privately educating their kids and seem to enjoy a lovely lifestyle.
Despite what i read in the press and GP's working incredibly long days the ones i know are on the school run, out for dinner, socialising and don't appear to be working any longer hours than the rest of us.....

I am an allied HCP, working alongside GP’s and can tell you that they earn every penny!
The level of responsibility and the sheer number of hours that they work over their contracted hours is staggering.

The problem with the gp model is that in other industries specialists of whatever kind will employ or engage other specific specialists to do rolls that are not their own specialism, so we have an office manager for example
who would negotiate any leases and do all that sort of thing, that then leaves the specialists to get on with what they do best and generate more sales/income which will cover the extra costs plus hopefully more. With the gp model if a gp doesn’t negotiate the lease himself and pays some one to do it so he can spend the time seeing more patients his income doesn’t go up, but his costs do.

DH and I both earn about £130k. DH in particular has a hugely responsible job. We are both professionals, albeit reaching the ends of our careers.

Nowadays DH only works about 40 to 45 hours per week but moved sideways for a higher status role. I work about 50 to 55 hpw.

I don't know a single professional: accountant, lawyer, etc., who works less than 50 hours per week. It's what professionals do. Why do doctors think they should work less than other high earning professionals?

Seems to be a budget for reform voters and big banks. Really worried about family farms being replaced with callous mega farms.

I think you need to read what the OP has actually written rather than replying to some sort of resentment that exists in your own head.
This post is about the NMW and NI rise and is nothing to do with how many hours you and your DH work.

I feel for your husband and you @Killingoffmyflowersonebyone, I run a smaller business than your husband, but we will still be hit hard by this budget. I realise that an additional £130k is a lot of money to come up with annually. I appreciate that you currently only charge £15 for a consultation, that’s very admirable, however if the big corporations are charging £40 per consultation, isn’t there some middle ground here. I’m sure your clients would prefer to pay say £25 per consultation than for the practice to be brought out being charged £40. I realise it’s not ideal for your clients, however upping your charges per procedure is still going to be more beneficial to them than you selling up completely.

Going back to @BurnoutGP's OP.

You have my sympathies. I think this NMW and NI rise will finish a lot of small businesses off. I hope that the GPs can negotiate some kind of additional funding from NHS England so that the population does not lose even more access to primary care and other essential services.

@Inthedeep problem is that money will be needed ASAP. Price increases won’t generate that money quickly enough…

That is simply unsustainable. I hope you I vote your MP to come and see what is going on before you shut.

Precisely, yet as usual the doctors are whining very loudly from a very privileged position. They are providing poor services and expect significant rewards for doing so. Successful businesses provide excellent services. GP's wanted to be self employed. They are not providing high standards of service. It's rather sad.

Just out of interest, which government did you think was good?

My local GP has 8 GPs, 4 of which are partners. Not one of them works practices all day, so they work mornings only with the non-partners covering some afternoon sessions. Whilst accepting that some of the partners may do accounts, admin, purchasing etc in the afternoon, if they couldn't survive on this they'd be working more. They also all live in the expensive bit of town and drive very posh cars, their kids are at private school. My heart isn't bleeding for them.
There is enormous wastage in the NHS, local authorities, government (I work with them every day and it's frightening). Public sector also pays handsomely, with a 30% plus pension that those of us in other sectors can only dream of. That would be the first place to start if we need to claw back some funds.
Benefits do need a review and Labour made one on the Heating payment and look what happened? Yet, I know a lot of elderly people who use it on a holiday, special treats or a weekend away. So it wasn't right somewhere.
Universities need a revamp - too many, too many places, too many mediocre students going. If numbers were cut the government could afford to provide more support.
If the country is going to pay for better services, anyone got any ideas on how?

History is already looking a lot more kinder on it than the Truss and Johnson shambles.
And we're what, sixteen weeks in to a five year term?
I'm enjoying seeing the far/right having a hissy fit just because they lost, and can't take it.

How much do you and your partners earn OP?

Yes. So much of the money being given to the public sector will probably be absorbed by increased payroll costs especially in the NHS due to the numbers it employs.

Exactly I wouldn’t say they were good but they are definately a lot less worse than the alternative