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 2016, the number of fully qualified GPs has consistently fallen, with 725 fewer in June 2025 than in June 2016. 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. In the latest year, there have been signs of improvement, with the number of GPs increasing by 1,071.
Trends in the number of staff working in general practice
The total number of health professionals has increased by 2,138 in the year to May 2025 and 33,901 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 9,900), pharmacy related roles (9,353) and care coordinators (5,038).
GPs themselves make up only a minority (around one in six) of the general practice workforce. The number of doctors training to become GPs (GP registrars) has increased by around 3,200 compared to pre-pandemic levels, and the number of GPs have increased by 932 over the same period.
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 June 2025 varied from 2,664 patients in Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB to 1,813 patients in Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB.