Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GPs there were in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England in each of the last ten years; and how many GP vacancies there were in those areas in the same period.

The information for Coventry and the West Midlands is not held in the format requested. However, the following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) general practitioners in the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and the Midlands in each year since September 2015 and in England since September 2012. Data prior to 2015 for Coventry and Warwickshire ICB and the Midlands is not held.

Notes:

• The data does not correspond directly to constituency boundaries, hence data for the nearest ICB is given instead.
• Data from September 2012 to September 2014 are not directly comparable with the data from September 2015 onwards. This is because a new methodology for collecting the workforce data was introduced in 2015, using the Primary Care Workforce Minimum Data Set.
• Data from September 2015 onwards contains estimates for practices which did not provide fully valid staff records.
• 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.
• Figures shown do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
• Figures from September 2015 and September 2016 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for these periods may be lower than the true picture.
• In September 2015, which was the first extract from the new Workforce Minimum Data Set, only three of four Health Education England regions submitted data. Consequently, September 2015 figures should be treated with additional caution.

The data for the number of vacancies is not held.