Patients Registered at a GP Practice, August 2022

Data sources

List size data was taken from the NHS Digital April 2021 Patients registered at a GP practice publication.

Population data was taken from the ONS 2021 Census.

Mapping to Local Authority

NHS Digital publish the number of patients registered by 2011 Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA) of the patient's home postcode every quarter, including April 2021. LSOA is then mapped to Local Authority Districts (LAD) using ONS reference data . Some areas have seen changes to their boundaries and have been issued new LSOA codes; where this occurs or it is not possible to map a patient's postcode to their LSOA these patients are indicated in the List size publication as "NO2011", indicating that they could not be mapped to a 2011 LSOA Code. In total, this affects around 34,000 patients.

ONS published a breakdown of the population estimate down to the appropriate unitary authorities, counties, districts and London boroughs.

Comparison

List size data and ONS population data were compared at LAD level to understand which areas had the largest differences in registered population compared to recorded population.

The variance was calculated for each LAD and upper and lower quartiles were used to determine outlier LAD's.

• List size data is captured as a snapshot on the 1st month and is only reflective of the GP registration systems at the time of the snapshot.
• Mappings to LSOA and LAD are done based on the postcode of the patient as recorded in the GP registration systems, therefore these mappings will only be as accurate as the recording of postcode in those systems.
• Where it was not possible to map a patient's postcode to their 2011 LSOA these patients are indicated in the List size publication as "NO2011". In total, this affects around 34,000 patients for whom we are unable to determine which LSOA those patients live in. These patients are therefore not included in this analysis.
• It is possible that patients living in England may be registered with GP practices outside of England (e.g, Wales, Scotland); we do not receive data for practices outside of England so these patients will therefore not be included in the list size figures but may be included in the census population figures.
• Please see the 2021 ONS census caveats on the "Notes" page of their data available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwalescensus2021

Local Authority Districts

Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA)