Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) GPs and (b) GP vacancies there were in (i) Coventry, (ii) the West Midlands and (iii) England in each of the last 10 years.

The number of full time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice in NHS Coventry and Rugby CCG, the West Midlands - defined as NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG, NHS Coventry and Rugby CCG, NHS Wolverhampton CCG, NHS Dudley CCG and NHS Walsall CCG - and England from September 2018 to September 2019 is shown in the following table. Data prior to this is not comparable at regional level.

Source: NHS Digital

Notes:

1. West Midlands has been defined as NHS Birmingham and Solihull CCG, NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG, NHS Coventry and Rugby CCG, NHS Wolverhampton CCG, NHS Dudley CCG and NHS Walsall CCG.
2. Data as at 30 September.
3. Figures shown do not include general practitioners (GPs) working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings.
4. Each period, figures contain estimates, for practices that did not provide fully valid General Medical Practice GP records.
5. FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In Registrars' contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours. To ensure consistency, these FTEs have been converted to the standard measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours in the table.
6. Figures are mapped to the regional hierarchy as at 1 April 2020.
7. The figures presented include GP registrars and GP locums.
8. Regional figures prior to Sept 2018 have been excluded as the figure for GPs including registrars from June 2018 onwards cannot be compared to earlier figures, because there is no regional information for a large number of GP registrars in this earlier time period, whose location is therefore recorded as Unknown for September 2015 to March 2018. Figures can be compared at England level.

Data is not included prior to 2015 as improvements were made to the methodology for recording all staff working in general practice in September 2015 and data prior to this is not comparable.

In 2018/19 1,398 practices reported 652 vacancies in the NHS Digital general practitioner workforce data collection. Less than a third of practices submit data to the NHS Digital collection each year and it is not possible to make estimations for practice that did not submit data therefore comparison between years cannot be made.