Who We Are

Our Mission, Vision & Values

Your Local Medical Committee (LMC)

Beds and Herts LMC – is your local medical committee providing the representative voice of General Practice in the counties of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

We work with GPs to ensure their views and experiences are heard and we seek to ensure these are understood by all our NHS and care partners and together we seek to deliver the best care for patients.

In all of our work “the aim of Beds and Herts LMC Ltd is to support GPs and practices to aspire to excellence in patient care by advising on and promoting the development of all aspects of general practice”.

A bit of history

Local Medical Committees (LMC) are statutory organisations written into the NHS Act since its inception in1948.  LMCs are the only elected professional body representing all local GPs. Set up in 1911, they predate the NHS and have played pivotal roles in facilitating the functioning of the NHS.

LMCs have survived many NHS re-organisations and have adapted to ensure GPs are supported however NHS services are structured.

As part of this formal role NHS England and CCGs have a statutory duty to consult with their local LMC on certain issues.

Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire have formed with one LMC staff team covering the two counties, but both counties have formal representation in the LMC structures.   All our-committees are made up of elected GP representatives and are supported by a staff team based in Stevenage.

In 2006, the Beds and Herts LMC became incorporated as a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) and Beds and Herts LMC Ltd was formed to allow us to expand the services we provide whilst ensuring adequate liability insurance for all LMC representatives.

Even though the LMC is a Limited Company it remains a not-for-profit organisation, limited by guarantee only: there are no shareholders but the GPs in our patch see the value from our services. Any profit made is put back into the organisation and used for the benefit of GPs and their practices and helps to keep the levy as low as possible.

Our Values 

We pride ourselves on having strong values of: Leadership, Expertise, Integrity, Adaptability and Collaboration.  

We strongly support development of high-quality general practice, in order that patients may receive excellent health care.   We promote teamwork and multidisciplinary practice and facilitate this wherever possible.   We will support colleagues going through performance or disciplinary procedures in order to ensure they are dealt with fairly and appropriately but we always work to support excellence in all our work.

We believe that on the whole ‘If it’s good for patients, it’s good for GPs’.

LMC Values