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 improve access to GP services in Wycombe.

During the pandemic, we have made £520 million available to improve access and expand general practice capacity. In October 2021, we published measures to allow more patients to see or speak to general practitioners and primary care teams during the winter, supported by the Winter Access Fund. Between November 2021 and March 2022, this supported Wycombe’s Primary Care Networks to offer more than 7,900 additional appointments.

We have committed £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments a year by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce. In the Buckingham Clinical Commissioning Group area, there were on average an estimated 10,900 appointments per working day in March 2022 excluding COVID-19 vaccination appointments, compared to 10,300 in March 2021. NHS England and NHS Improvement have advised that six practices will receive funding for new advanced telephony systems, with a further three practices already in receipt of funding for existing advanced systems. This will provide more capacity, flexibility for patients and enable more efficient use of existing practice staff.