Primary Care Network Contract DES Year-End 2025/26 – reminder
Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are reminded to complete year-end actions to achieve accurate Network Contract DES (NCD) 2025/26 achievement calculation and payment process before the final payment deadline.
Action required by Friday, 24 April 2026
All eligible practices with an active PCN membership must have the NCD 2025/26 service offered and auto-accepted by end of day on Friday, 24 April 2026. If participation is not accepted by this date, the practice will not be included in the NCD data collection by the NHS England data extraction team, and achievement may not be calculated.
Why this process matters
Data for PCN achievements will be collected by the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) and provided to CQRS to calculate the PCN payments for the current financial year.
NCD 2025/26 Year-End Calculation Timeline
Data expected from GPES: Friday 24 April – Monday 27 April
Achievement calculation: Tuesday 19 May
Commissioner Payment Approval Date Options
| Payment date 2026* | Commissioner approval required by* |
| Friday 19 June | Friday 5 June |
| Monday 20 July | Monday 6 July |
| Thursday 20 August | Thursday 6 August |
*The payment and approval dates may be subject to change
Year-end actions required
To support the accurate achievement calculation of NCD for PCNs and ensure the payment request is sent to PCSE for payment before the final ‘Commissioner Approval Date’ option (see table above), please ensure the actions below are completed by the appropriate users and by the deadline outlined.
| Action | To be completed by | Deadline (EOD) |
| 1. Verify all practices with an active PCN membership have had their NCD 25/26 service offered and auto accepted on their behalf. If participation is not accepted by Friday 24 April, the practice will not be able to be included in the NCD data collection by NHSE data extraction team, and achievement may not be calculated. | Commissioners | Friday 24 April 2026 |
| 2. Manually enter data for any missing indicators (Payment or MI) under the Data Submission tab. Note: The EHCH01 indicator (Care Homes) is not part of the NCD 25/26 service. As a result, PCN leads/Commissioners are no longer required to manually submit data for this indicator. | Commissioners | Before Service Provider Approval |
| 3. Once Achievement has calculated, check accuracy of payment and aggregated data indicators. If an indicator requires updating, PCN lead to report to Commissioner. | PCN Leads | Before Service Provider Approval |
| 4. PCN lead to declare calculated achievement. Guide on how to declare indicators. | PCN Leads | Before Awaiting Commissioning Organisation Approval |
| 5. Commissioner to approve achievement. Guide on the approval process. | Commissioners | Before Payment Approval Date |
| 6. Financially approve achievement to ensure a payment can be processed by the payment agency Primary Care Support England (PCSE). | Financial Approver | Financial Approval |
Note: for the NCD 2025/26 service, all inputs are automated. Manual intervention is only required if automated extraction has not completed successfully. Commissioners will be contacted with next steps if this occurs.
CQRS Support
Service information: Network Contract DES (NCD) Payments 2025/26
Website: CQRS Training
CQRS Support Team: support@cqrs.co.uk / 0330 124 4039, 8am-6pm, Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays)
Calculations, Contract & Policy queries (NHS England): england.gpcontracts@nhs.net (queries about policy that CQRS calculates) or england.primarycaresupportservices@nhs.net (escalations relating to the CQRS service)