General practice
What are the trends in staff numbers working in general practice?
Most of the contact that people have with the NHS is with general practice: there are an estimated 300 million appointments each year. These services provide the first step in diagnosing and treating most patients’ health conditions.
Due to changes in the data, trends in general practice staff are limited to 2015 at the earliest. The data do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres and walk-in centres. From July 2019, primary care networks (PCNs) have offered services to patients and employ new specialist staff such as clinical pharmacists, social prescribing link workers, physiotherapists, physician associates and paramedics. NHS Digital has started to publish information on the PCN workforce, but the data does not presently cover all PCNs. Based on the PCN data that is available, we have estimated the number of certain primary care staff groups employed by PCNs across England in some of the charts below.
Number of GPs
Since 2015, the number of fully qualified GPs has consistently fallen, with 1,167 fewer in December 2024 than in December 2015. This is despite there having been a target to increase the number of GPs by 6,000 between late 2019 and early 2024. Since the expiration of the target, and the change in government, no new target for GP numbers has been announced. However, the Labour Party manifesto committed to “thousands more” GPs.
Trends in the number of staff working in general practice
The total number of health professionals has increased by 3,464 in the year to December 2024 and 33,979 compared to before the pandemic (December 2019). General practice has witnessed a dramatic change in mix of professions. Compared to before the pandemic, the largest absolute increases have been for non-clinical staff (increasing by 10,324), pharmacy related roles (9,332) and care coordinators (4,897).
GPs themselves make up only a minority (around one in seven) of the general practice workforce. While the number of doctors training to become GPs (GP registrars) has increased by around 3,800 compared to pre-pandemic levels, the number of GPs have plateaued over that time period. However, over the last year the number of GPs increased by 836 (3%).
Variation between regions in the number of GPs is longstanding. Though there have been efforts to fill these gaps through targeted recruitment schemes, differences still remain. When taking account of the relative needs of a ICB’s patient population, the number of patients per one GP as of December 2024 varied from 2,705 patients in Kent and Medway ICB to 1,862 patients in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB.