Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to attract more GPs to Warrington.

There are a number of schemes and initiatives to recruit and also to retain general practitioners (GPs) within Warrington. These include the GP Retained Doctor Scheme and also the GP International Recruitment Scheme which has received national approval and is now underway. NHS Warrington Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is part of these schemes and aims to recruit at least 12 GPs from the GP International Recruitment Programme.

Alongside this, Warrington CCG has undertaken several other pieces of work aimed at supporting GPs and general practice in the area, such as;

- Carrying out an audit of appointments which indicated that the majority of those people seen by a GP did not need to see a GP, which suggests that there are opportunities to redesign the workforce;

- Scoped out demand and capacity within general practice to establish if the correct workforce is in place and to identify and address workforce issues;

- Worked closely with NHS England to develop the role of support staff as care navigators to free up GP time;

- Worked collaboratively across groups of practices known as clusters to share skill mixes amongst practices, developing new care models for primary care pathways that will ensure collaborative working with wider health care services, to ensure patients are seen at the right time by the right part of the system; and

- Refreshed the primary care strategy with workforce as a priority.