GP Charge for £20 for letter

[raha1010]

My DD she is starting school this year and she has eczema and cream needs to be applied when she needs.

In order to apply the cream they ask letter from GP and GP charge £20 for this, is this normal.

When she studied pre school this was not the case. Have they changed recently to charge more money?

It’s quite normal for GP’s to charge for letters and form filling. It’s £25 for a letter at my surgery.
They are losing a lot of revenue this year due to Covid and not being able to hit targets (which they get money for) so it’s quite possible that, where they previously would have let the charge slide, they are now charging for everything they can.

Can the prescription not be printed on the label? I mean to make it clear when it needs to be applied? Or can you request a meeting with the head to discuss this? I'm a teacher and in my school we would accept that. We wouldn't expect a parent to pay that!

Why should the GP do extra work for free because of somebody else's policy?

Many have, for a long time, but are now pushing back, less as suggested due to financial pressures, but more because the list of expectations is ever growing.....

Passport verifications, skydiving exemptions, insurance claims for missed holidays, school exams, firearms applications, a lot of these take some time and involve a degree of risk or responsibility to be transferred to the GP.

Completely normal for a gp to charge for these kind of things. It isn't a requirement on their part.

It’s to try to avoid loads of GP time being taken up with form filling for others, instead of dealing with the appointments they should be handling.

@prh47bridge

It's normal for a GP to charge for letters like thus.

But is it legal for state schools to require parents to pay for a private medical service for their DC?

When she studied pre school this was not the case. Have they changed recently to charge more money?

Well yes, they have obviously changed if it's different now to how it was when you needed a letter for nursery? You ask if they have changed to charge more, what did they change before

Completely normal for a gp to charge for these kind of things/letters.

But is it legal for state schools to require parents to pay for a private medical service for their DC?

Yes, in the same way that they can insist that parents pay for a uniform. The school is not breaking any laws by requiring parents to provide a letter from the child's GP even if the parents have to pay for the letter.

Yes my GP asked me to pay for a fit to fly note... she had previously mentioned that 1/3 the patients hadn’t turned up that day as it was so nice and sunny, I asked if they would have to pay for not turning up ... she didn’t charge me in the end!

It’s normal for GP’s to ask but really the prescription should be enough.
DD has inhalers and eczema etc and they are happy with the label on the medication which says “please apply 4 times per day” or similar...