Network Contract DES (NCD) Payments 2025/26

Background

Investment and evolution: The five-year framework for GP contract reform to implement The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, describes significant investment in Primary Care Networks (PCNs) through the Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES).

The seventh year of the Network Contract DES will begin in April 2025, the data being collected covers Early Cancer Diagnosis, Structured Medication Reviews and Tackling neighbourhood Inequalities.

Purpose and outline

The purpose is to support NHS England (NHSE) by providing the relevant data/information that is used by PCNs/practices and commissioners to acknowledge achievement and ultimately ensure payment is accurate and in line with the enhanced service specification.

How this service is commissioned and provided

NHS England service specification, guidance and technical requirements will be published here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/gp-contract

The requirements for this Service are covered by the Enhanced Service specification.

2025/26: Information about this service

Quality service start date: 1 April 2025

Quality service end date: 31 March 2026

Payment period: Annually

Collection frequency: Monthly

Manual or automatic entry: Automatic data collection

Co-commissioning: No

Service user guides

The Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) user guides describe how to participate, manually enter and declare achievement for this service. Activity and achievement should be recorded monthly.

Network Contract DES (NCD) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 2025/26

This page features Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Network Contract DES (NCD) 2025/26.

Data is collected monthly by the data suppliers who extract data from clinical systems.
The Commissioner is to report this to ODS who will send us the PCN end date. Once received, this will automatically end the participation of the service for the practice and no further action is required by the Commissioner. Failure to follow this process will result in incorrect calculations at year end. Commissioners are not to apply service end dates.

For more information about Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES), please visit the NHS England website.