Insights for GP Partnerships, Practices and PCNs

Do you need legal advice before mediation, a lawyer on the day, or both? Dr Clare Sieber explains the options and offers a practical checklist for GP partners.

Dr Clare Sieber joins Katie Collin on Beyond the Balance Sheet to explore how trust, communication, values and governance can sit beneath GP partnership and PCN disputes.

GP partnership mediation is not only about repairing working relationships. It can also help partners negotiate a clean, confidential and commercially workable exit when continuing together is no longer realistic.

The “green socks” clause gives GP partnerships a non-fault route out of an unworkable relationship, but it must be drafted clearly, used carefully, and handled with a realistic view of legal and reputational risk.

A partnership without a valid, signed partnership agreement will likely be operating as a ‘partnership at will’. This means that instead of working under terms agreed by the partners, the running of your practice is governed by the 1890 Partnership Act. ‘ We have made an active choice not to have a partnership agreement because we all get on fine together ’, is a phrase I often hear, but by choosing to have no partnership agreement, that partnership has - without realising -