This quarterly report presents data about GPs, Nurses, Direct Patient Care and Admin/Non-Clinical staff working in General Practice in England, along with information on their patients and practices. All data is final at publication.
Following recent investigations into the GP Locum data within this data collection, on 28 November 2019 we revised the national full-time equivalent (FTE) figures for GP Locums in September 2015, March 2016, September 2016 and December 2016 and removed the breaks in the time series. In this publication we have now added these figures to the regional FTE breakdowns. However, the GP headcount time series remains unaltered as the methodology used accounted for the level of work undertaken which is represented by FTE; we are unable to make assumptions about headcount from this due to changing locum working patterns.
Please note: The new locum FTE figures for September 2015 to December 2016 are not comparable with earlier figures published prior to 28 November 2019. This means that all the figures released in the General Practice Workforce 30 September 2019 publication supersede the earlier releases, which we advise should no longer be used.
Information about the contents of this publication and how it can and cannot be used, can be found in the Report tab. Our publication includes information on recent and planned changes as well as highlighting future developments.
We are continually working to improve our publications and welcome feedback from all our users, by email to: [email protected].
Various data breakdowns are available in the accompanying Excel and CSV files, including time series and breakdowns by categories such as age and gender. Revised data is also presented regionally and at practice level for September 2015 to December 2019 in the accompanying CSVs.
This publication also features an interactive dashboard which allows users to explore the underlying data in a variety of ways. This can be accessed by clicking on the dashboard link below.
Links to other publications presenting healthcare workforce information can be found under Related Links.
Latest figures, for 31 December 2019:
is a standardised measure of the workload of an employed person and allows for the total workforce workload to be expressed in an equivalent number of full-time staff. 1.0 FTE equates to full-time work of 37.5 hours per week, an FTE of 0.5 would equate to 18.75 hours per week.
34,708 Full-time equivalent (0.6% (199) more than December 2018)
45,869 Headcount (3.3% (1,473) more than December 2018)
Fully qualified GPs (excludes Registrars)
28,319 Full-time equivalent (1.0% (277) fewer than December 2018)
39,358 Headcount (2.5% (975) more than December 2018)
Qualified permanent GPs (excludes Registrars and Locums)
26,928 Full-time equivalent (1.7% (458) fewer than December 2018
34,773 Headcount (1.4% (465) more than December 2018)
16,819 Full-time equivalent (2.7% (435) more than December 2018)
24,121 Headcount (2.6% (610) more than December 2018)
Direct patient care staff
14,050 Full-time equivalent (9.3% (1,193) more than December 2018)
20,622 Headcount (7.9% (1,512) more than December 2018)
Admin / non-clinical staff
68,886 Full-time equivalent (3.2% (2,109) more than December 2018)
97,213 Headcount (2.4% (2,320) more than December 2018)
These figures include estimates for practices not providing complete and/or valid data. The percentage of practices requiring full or partial estimations are shown in Table 1 in the Report tab.
Comments and feedback are welcomed by NHS Digital, via [email protected] (clearly stating GP Workforce as the subject heading) or 0300 303 5678.
