One partner is off for six weeks, your salaried GP has handed in notice, and the patients still need appointments on Monday. Hiring a locum GP is the usual answer, and it can happen quickly, but the checks that make it safe sit with the practice, whoever found the doctor. This guide is for a practice manager at a GP surgery in England, written against GMC, NHS England, NHS Resolution, NHS Pensions and CQC guidance as it stands in October 2026.
Start with the GMC register
Search the doctor on the GMC's online register before anything else. You are looking for three things: full registration, a licence to practise, and an entry on the GP Register. A doctor without the GP Register entry cannot work as a GP in the NHS, however experienced they are in hospital medicine. GP trainees are the only exception, and they work under supervision, not as locums.
While you are there, read the history. Conditions or undertakings on a doctor's registration do not always rule them out, but they tell you what they can and cannot do and whether they need a named supervisor. Print or save the page with the date on it. A CQC inspector will ask how you knew the doctor was registered on the day they started, and a dated screenshot answers that in one go.
Check the performers list as well
A GP cannot see NHS patients in England unless they are on the National Performers List. PCSE runs a public search at secure.pcse.england.nhs.uk/PerformersLists, and it takes less than a minute. Check the status says included, not suspended or with conditions, and save that page too.
This is the check most often missed, because practices assume the GMC check covers it. It does not. A doctor can be fully licensed by the GMC and still be removed from, or never added to, the performers list, which means they cannot legally work in your surgery under your NHS contract. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each keep their own list, so a GP moving across a border needs to be on the list for the country they are working in.
Indemnity: what CNSGP covers and what it does not
Since 1 April 2019, the Clinical Negligence Scheme for General Practice, run by NHS Resolution, has covered clinical negligence claims arising from NHS general practice. Locums are covered when they are engaged by the practice to deliver NHS services, whatever their employment status, so you do not need to see proof of clinical negligence cover for that work.
The gap is everything outside it. CNSGP does not cover private work, GMC investigations, disciplinary matters or inquests. A locum who does insurance medicals or private appointments for you needs their own cover for those, and every GP should hold membership of a medical defence organisation for regulatory and inquest support. Ask for a copy of their current membership certificate and note the renewal date.
DBS, right to work and references
A GP seeing patients is in regulated activity, so an enhanced DBS check with both the adults' and children's barred lists is the right level. If the doctor is on the DBS Update Service, you can check their certificate online with their consent, which saves weeks. Otherwise ask for a certificate issued within the last few years and decide, in writing, whether you will accept it.
Check right to work from original documents or the Home Office share code service, and keep a copy. Ask for two references, one from the most recent clinical post, and read them rather than filing them. Regulation 19 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 applies to locums as it does to anyone else. CQC expects you to hold this information for every doctor who works in the practice, or a written confirmation from the agency that it has done the checks, with sight of the evidence on request.
The pension forms practices forget
If the locum is self employed and pays into the NHS Pension Scheme, they will send a GP Locum Form A with their invoice. You complete Form B and pay the employer contribution on top of their fee. For 2026 to 2027 that is 14.38 percent, worked out on 90 percent of the fee, which is the pensionable part. The forms must reach PCSE within 10 weeks of the work or they are rejected, so do not leave Form B in a tray.
A locum who invoices through their own limited company cannot pension that work, and the forms do not apply. A locum who works for you continuously for more than six months stops being a freelance locum for pension purposes and should be paid as a salaried GP, so watch long bookings.
Hiring a locum GP through an agency or direct
Booking direct is cheaper per session and you build a relationship with a doctor who knows your patients. You also take on every check above, chase the pension paperwork and find cover again when they are ill. Through an agency you pay more per session, but the vetting is done before the doctor reaches you, the compliance file arrives with them and a replacement comes from the same place. Either route is fine. The mistake is assuming the other party did the checks without seeing the evidence.
Before the first session
Put together a short locum pack and send it before day one: system login and smartcard arrangements, how appointments are booked, prescribing and referral routes, safeguarding leads and the duty doctor arrangement, and where the defibrillator is. Agree in writing what you expect them to do, and what you do not. Visits, results, prescription requests and paperwork are where disputes with locums usually start, and a two line agreement settles them before they begin.
Flamingo Workforce supplies locum doctors to practices, clinics and hospitals across the UK. Every doctor we put forward has been checked against the GMC register, the right DBS level and the right to work, and you get their file before they start. See our doctor recruitment page or get in touch with the dates you need covering.