The government has confirmed that Monday 19th September will be a Bank Holiday.

As the commissioner of primary care services, NHS England and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) have the responsibility to ensure patients can access the primary care services they need. However, primary care professionals and their teams will want to pay their respects on this day wherever possible and contractually may be supported to do so with the declaration of the bank holiday.

GP practices will be contractually able to close on this day for their core services as it is a confirmed bank holiday. ICBs will need to urgently work to ensure sufficient out-of-hours (Integrated Urgent Care) services capacity is in place during what would have been core hours to meet patient’s urgent primary medical care needs.

You can read the full letter here.