Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent general practitioners in England excluding those still in training (a) there were in each year since 2015 and (b) there are in 2022 to date.

The following table shows all full-time equivalent (FTE) general practitioners (GPs), excluding GPs in training grade from September 2015 to September 2021, the most recent comparable data available.

Source:

General Practice Workforce, 31 December 2021 NHS Digital

Notes:

1. 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 GPs in Training Grade contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency. It is not recommended that comparisons be made between quarterly or monthly figures due to the unknown effect of seasonality on workforce numbers.
2. 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.
3. Data includes estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid staff records. The percentage of FTE that is estimated is presented for each staff group, and includes full and partial estimates.
4. Full Estimation: Estimates are made for both headcount and FTE for those practices which did not provide any valid data for one or more of the four staff groups (or in the case of practices providing no valid direct patient care staff data, estimates are only made for those practices also failing to provide valid data for at least one other staff group). The absence of data for a staff group could be due to poor data quality or no submitted data. For these practices, clinical commissioning group-level estimations are made.
5. Partial Estimation: In some cases, practices provide valid records about their staff but do not include information about their working hours. In these cases, the record is retained and estimates calculated for their working hours and full-time equivalence based upon the national averages for the job role. These figures are referred to as ‘partial estimates’ and the scale of these estimates varies by staff group.