GPs must help patients obtain firearms licences if requested

[artiglio]

"Where no relevant medical conditions are disclosed the police will contact your GP asking if they are aware of any relevant medical conditions or have any concerns about the issue of the firearm or shotgun certificate. Depending on the reply, the police may ask you to obtain a medical report from your GP/specialist. You are expected to meet the cost if a fee is charged for this. If further information is required the police may request and pay for a further report"

The above was in the notes attached to my recent renewal application. I read it as I'm liable for any charge made by my GP in reply to the initial police contact.

Interesting that in GeeRam's post the medical profession are wary of any legal consequences should things go wrong, as the police seem to share the same view in that police officers are specifically excluded from acting as a referee for a FAC/SGC. All a bit convoluted.

[Pete]

Interesting..............a retired Det/Const (or was it Insp) refereed my original application 10 years ago.

Pete

[GeeRam]

Am still in the dark as to what happens - if my Dr says '£50 please' & I say 'sod off' i am not willing to pay what happens? if there is no Doc reply after x days do the FLOs have to record that as no adverse reason to reject the application? I dont believe the Dr can force me to pay a fee? there is no contract between us? as far as i am concerned the FAC fee is the only fee i will pay.

if the BMA are so againts this why dont they just advise Dr's to not cooperate & not reply to FAC applications? then the Gov would have to go away & think again.

That's what the process was before this 'good news' from SACS

That's why I'm now completely at a loss as to what to do. I had a request for money for my SGC app 2 weeks ago from GP, via a voicemail message, which as per BASC, I've just ignored, on the basis of the 21 days extra wait..........but now, no idea.

Well, my own question has now been answered, as my SGC was on my doormat when I got home this evening

[Blackstuff]

"Where no relevant medical conditions are disclosed the police will contact your GP asking if they are aware of any relevant medical conditions or have any concerns about the issue of the firearm or shotgun certificate. Depending on the reply, the police may ask you to obtain a medical report from your GP/specialist. You are expected to meet the cost if a fee is charged for this. If further information is required the police may request and pay for a further report"

The above was in the notes attached to my recent renewal application. I read it as I'm liable for any charge made by my GP in reply to the initial police contact.

Previously there was only a fee/charge generated if something was discovered AFTER the initial enquiry from the police to the GP, for a 'proper' report to be written, (I don't think anyone is disputing that this is reasonable), not for the INITIAL enquiry itself. That situation was tolerated by GP's/BMA because the initial enquiries were few and far between, they usually only happened when the applicant revealed an issue on the application form, the note above is only a recent development.

Following the Horden shootings/Durhams bollock-dropping, the police now contact the GP EVERY time, which has generated significantly extra work* for the GP's hence why they now want paying for it.

*significant as in compared to the previous situation. Think about the number of certificate holders in your county, IIRC there are about 8,000 in mine. Now think of the number of GP surgeries, and number of GPs within each surgery. Now divide the number of certificate holders by 5 (number of years a certificate is valid) to get the number of these enquiries per year, and then divide that number by the number of GP's in the county....I think the average GP will be (un)lucky to get more than 10 a year

EDIT: here is a link to the number of certs by county; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... l=en#gid=1

So for me there was 8663 at the last count. Lets pretend that NONE of these are cotermius ( ) and there are 1737 renewals per year plus lets say 200 new grants = 1937.

From the information I can find there are 32 GP surgeries in Durham. Lets conservative say there are 5 GPs per surgery (the one I go to has at least double that!) so that's 160 GP's dealing with 1937 requests = 12 per year, one per month.... Higher than I expected but still.... and lets not forget the number of coterminous certificates is likely to bring the number down as well as the real number of GP's.

Interesting..............a retired Det/Const (or was it Insp) refereed my original application 10 years ago.

Pete

'Retired' being the operative word.


The way things are going I smell a price increase coming in next April. I'm actually massively surprised there wasn't one last/this year.

[artiglio]

It'll be interesting to see what my gp surgery charges for my renewal. Cost recovery will be seen as a means across a whole range of services as the years pass, i don't really have too much problem for paying for what i use , i do have a problemwith contributing to a pot to which i'm then asked to add more because my wants aren't covered.