General Practice Staff Survey (GPSS)

Some of you will know that the NHS has conducted an annual staff survey for more than twenty years. It is an incredibly robust, credible source of information that helps drive improved working experience.

Until recently this opportunity has not been available to staff working in general practice, however we want everyone who is part of the NHS to have the chance to feedback on their experience at work, and this starts in general practice for primary care.

For 2026, GP practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) delivering primary medical care services under an NHS contract (GMS, PMS and APMS) are required to participate in the GPSS. Other organisations working in general practice, such as federations or training hubs, may participate on a voluntary basis.

The sampling period for the General Practice Staff Survey (GPSS) is now open. Practices, PCNs and other eligible organisations must submit their staff lists to the Survey Coordination Centre, based at Picker, via an online portal before the 1st September 2026 to participate.

Please follow the link for information on how to submit your staff list:

https://www.nhsstaffsurveys.com/2026-nhs-general-practice-staff-survey/

You can also access the submission portal directly via the following link:

https://bit.ly/GPSS26StaffListPortal

GPSS is run independently and is done to the highest standards of quality and accuracy. Responses to questions are kept confidential and anonymous. As staff send their responses directly to an external survey contractor, there is no way that anyone in an NHS organisation will be able to link data with a particular individual.

It is important that those working in general practice are heard, and therefore those who have received a survey invitation are encouraged to share their views. Completing your staff list ensures that your staff will be invited to complete the survey in October 2026. The survey will then close in November and results will be communicated approximately 3 months after the survey closes.

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Training Hub will be on-hand to suppport practices with general queries through this process, please contact us via e-mail at candptraininghub@nhs.net.

Any queries regarding the portal, please direct these to gpss@surveycoordination.com

Demo on submitting staff list

Open Link

Frequently Asked Questions

Reporting is designed to provide insight into experience while protecting individual anonymity. Reporting is similar to the existing NHS Staff Survey, as it allows benchmarking and comparative analysis at a system and national level. This type of reporting is useful to inform our understanding of workforce needs and policy development.

The GPSS is being run independently and is done to the highest standards of quality and accuracy. Individual responses are kept anonymous.

Reporting will be in summary form and does not reveal the identity of anyone who took part. To ensure anonymity, some data may be suppressed to adhere to strict confidentiality standards as set out by the NHS.

Smaller organisations or those with few responses may not receive results though they will feed anonymously into the higher-level reporting. This maintains confidentiality and anonymity of responses, protecting the survey respondent.

A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) has established the information governance risk for the use of personal data as low. The survey provider is the Survey Coordination Centre (SCC), based at Picker. Picker is a trusted research institute regularly appointed to conduct the NHS Staff Survey. The SCC has robust data privacy and protection processes in place to securely process data on behalf of participating sites. Individual responses will be held by the SCC and available only to SCC analysts, with reporting restricted to meet confidentiality requirements.

The staff lists will be collected and stored in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 and follow the principles of the NHS Confidentiality Code of Practice.

The legal basis to allow NHS England to collect staff lists for the purposes of engagement such as staff surveys falls under article 6e of GDPR. The staff list information is collected ‘for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller’.

The personal staff data (names, email addresses, work addresses) will be transferred to the
SCC via an online Qualtrics portal that uses AES 256bit encryption for stored data, encrypts
all data in transit using Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and enforces HTTP
Strict Transport Security (HSTS). Staff data uploaded to the portal can only be accessed or
downloaded by SCC’s research staff, and it requires a password to access. All staff data will
be saved in a restricted folder on Picker’s secure network, and will be only accessible by the researchers working on the project. Under no circumstances will staff list data be shared with
third parties.

The survey responses are kept confidential and anonymous, in accordance with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018.  Unique reference numbers will separate the link between individual and survey response. These numbers will support SCC to track completion rates and send reminders to complete the survey.

Staff survey responses will be returned directly to the SCC and held by the SCC alone in password-protected files. These are only accessible to a small number of analysts and will not include details of name of staff who completed the survey.

NHSE, ICBs, PCNs, federations and general practices will not have access to the completed questionnaires, or any personal data linked to the survey.

Reports will not be provided where anonymity could be compromised. The SCC will identify the minimum number of responses before suppression is applied to ensure anonymity is protected.