Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government further to the Written Answer by Lord O’Shaughnessy on 23 January (HL4387), what plans they have to collect basic information about the opening hours of general practices.

General practitioner (GP) surgeries self-declare their opening hours to NHS England on an annual basis, this covers reception and phone line opening and closing times.

A new data collection on extended access to general practice was launched during October 2016, in response to the government’s mandate to NHS England, which sets out: “to ensure everyone has easier and more convenient access to GP services, including appointments at evenings and weekends”. The collection has been set up to monitor the availability of pre-bookable appointments in general practice at evenings and weekends. The first collection took place during October 2016 and was published in December 2016. Collections will continue bi-annually until March 2021. The first report, General Practice Extended Access: October 2016, is attached. It should be noted that these are experimental statistics.