Following the Bengoa Report published in 2016, which recommended that Health and Social Care should formally invest, employ, and build capacity in networks of existing health and social care providers, GP Federations were born. A GP Federation is a group of GP Practices, established to address capacity workload issues within general practice.  They enable practices to retain key aspects of their individuality whilst benefitting from being part of largescale organisation, in receipt of NHS funding. 

Each of the 17 Federations covers around 100,000 patients with, on average, 18 practices. The Federations and FSUs are all Community Interest Companies in the Not-for-Profit Sector and are all independent companies.

NI is the only part of the UK which has a unified model of Federations governed by a unified

Members Agreement covering its entire population. Within the Federation organisational model,

the GP practice is sovereign with the number of ‘Member Directors’ being one per practice.

The Federations are supported by the Federation Support Unit (FSU). The FSU has been designed to provide Federation members of Belfast and the South East with affordable management and administrative support. The FSU is owned by the 8 Federations in the Belfast and South Eastern area. The map shows Federation and FSUs boundaries across NI.

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First established in 2005 in UK and support a wide range of activities in the public and private sectors. It is a limited company which operates to provide a benefit to the community it serves.

The purpose of a CIC is primarily one of community benefit rather than private profit. It provides limited liability for its shareholders.

The Asset Lock-Asset” is a general term used to cover all the provisions designed to ensure that the assets of the CIC (including any profits or other surpluses generated by its activities) are used for the benefit of the community.

Legislation has created the role of Regulator of CICs who approves and oversees the creation and operation of these organisations. The Community Interest Test must be met.

The Eastern FSU was incorporated in 2016 and was set up to serve Federations and, therefore, practices. Our role is to ensure that each federation runs smoothly in a manner that results in quality, economy of scale and value for money. It has been designed to provide federation members with excellent, affordable support initially in the provision arena.

In essence the FSU absorbs those nonclinical support services that its members require to respond to various income streams and their relationship with each other and federation level.

Visit Eastern FSU Website – https://easternfsu.com/

• Contract management
• Business Intelligence
• Information governance
• Financial management
• Human Resources
• Clinical procurement
• Communications and patient engagement
• Governance and quality
• Invoice and Billing
• Central Salaries
• Monitoring of Accountants and their function
• Inter-federation transfers
• Central Purchasing and Contracting
• Planning
• Policies and Procedures –
• Data and Records Management
• External Relationships
• Educational Planning and Development
• Risk Management
• Administration service.