General Practice Workforce, 31 December 2021

We have introduced a significant methodological change in this release and revised the entire time series back to September 2015, which means that figures in this release differ from and supersede those previously published. 

In August 2021 (for the June 2021 publication) we revised the entire General Practice workforce time series back to September 2015, making several methodological changes to the way in which the workforce numbers are calculated.  

• Fully-estimated records (where a practice has not provided any valid data for a staff group) - were removed. Partial estimates (where the practice provides a record for an identifiable individual but does not include information about their contracted or working hours) - were still made and included in outputs.  
• Ad-hoc locums - were removed from the main tables as the move to monthly data extracts meant the headcount figures would not be comparable with previous quarterly collections and retaining them in the main tables would lead to an unavoidable break in the time series  
• Zero hours contracts – where working or contracted hours were recorded in the reporting period, staff are now counted in both the FTE and headcount figures, where neither working hours or contracted hours are recorded, staff are not counted in either.  

Following stakeholder feedback regarding the impact removing the estimates may have had on the rate of the change in parts of workforce, NHS Digital committed to reviewing the removal of fully-estimated records. As a result of the findings of this review, estimates have been reinstated using an improved methodology, and the entire time series has been revised to include these estimates.   All other changes introduced in August 2021 remain in place. 

Please refer to the Methodological Review and Changes page of this publication for more information. 

All historical Individual-level CSVs since September 2015 and Practice-level CSVs for selected reporting periods have been reproduced with revised figures and included with this publication.  We plan to reproduce all relevant historical CSVs in summer 2022, to include the revised figures and remapped to represent the regional structure which is due to come into effect on 1 July 2022.

There have been changes to the NHS England and Improvement regional structure since this release. From 1st July 2022, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) were established as statutory bodies replacing CCGs and STPs. From the General Practice Workforce, 31 July 2022 publication, data is instead aggregated to Sub-ICB Location, and ICB level. These geography updates also involved boundary changes, with some practices moving to different Sub-ICB Locations and ICBs than they would previously have been situated.

In order to have a consistent and comparable time series at regional level, all Individual and Practice-level CSVs were reproduced as part of the 31 July 2022 release, with practices and Sub-ICB Locations remapped to reflect this latest structure. National totals are unaffected by this remapping but some figures at Sub-ICB (previously CCG) and ICB (previously STP) levels may differ to those previously published.

The regional bulletin tables 6a, 6b, 7 and Annex C, and the Practice and Individual-level CSVs presented here reflect the old structure. Therefore, users are encouraged to use the remapped CSV files released with the 31 July 2022 publication for historical regional general practice workforce figures. The time series table Annex C in the 31 July 2022 bulletin file has also been remapped.