The doctor won’t see you now… but they’ve probably got time to! Named, GP surgeries carrying out the fewest appointments – so how many are done each month at YOUR practice?

GPs at hundreds of practices are seeing fewer than 10 patients a day on average, a Daily Mail investigation suggests.

Family doctors in the busiest surgeries, meanwhile, appear to be churning through at least 100 appointments each day – four times above ‘safe’ limits.

Campaigners today demanded an end to the ‘postcode lottery’ experiences endured by millions as they warned that rushing patients out of the door can lead to symptoms of serious illnesses being missed.

And they bemoaned how GPs – who pocket £140,000 a year, on average, before tax – are underutilised in swathes of England.

Our audit exposing the situation in all 6,000 practices across the nation comes as family doctors hinted they could strike over changes to make it easier for patients to book appointments.

Use the Daily Mail’s search tool to find how your practice is faring, simply type your full postcode into the search bar below.

GP surgeries in England are now required to keep online forms open for the duration of their working hours for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests.

Officials said the move, introduced nationwide on October 1, would be ‘subject to necessary safeguards in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online’.

But the British Medical Association (BMA), which warns doctors that carrying out more than 25 appointments a day is dangerous, has dangled the threat of a formal dispute. Union chiefs said safeguards were never put in place and no additional staff were brought in to manage what it predicts to be a ‘barrage of online requests’.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has vowed to not back down over the changes, in a row that raises the prospect of GPs capping daily consultations to the BMA safe limit – described as ‘arbitrary’ by NHS bosses.

NHS Digital figures, crunched by the Mail, named 49 Marine Avenue Surgery in Whitley Bay as being the quietest in the country, with just 189 appointments over the period split between 3.1 FTE GPs, the equivalent of 59.2 each.

It, however, went through a merger and was only technically open for one day during the three month period between 1 May and 31 July – skewing its figures.

Behind 49 Marine Avenue Surgery came Benfleet Surgery in Castle Point, Essex. 

Despite having 2,547 patients on its books in July, it recorded performing just 168 appointments either with a GP or ‘unknown’ professional between the start of May and end of July.

Separate workforce stats show Benfleet Surgery, which shuts on weekends, employed 1.6 full-time equivalent GPs – defined as working 37.5 hours a week – in July.

This would equate to an equivalent of 108 appointments per doctor over the course of 64 working days over three months – or just 1.6 each per day, if the figures the practice submitted to NHS Digital are correct.

Mail analysis showed GPs at 13 practices carried out the equivalent of fewer than five appointments a day. In total, 378 did no more than 10.

At the other end of the scale was the Old School Surgery in Canterbury.

Over the same three-month period, it recorded 9,536 appointments.

But NHS staffing records show the practice had the equivalent of 1 FTE GP.

That would mean, if the NHS figures were recorded accurately, all appointments were seen by one GP and would equate to 149 per day.

At the typical 37.5-hour week, that would equate to one every three minutes.

The Roserton Street Surgery in London’s Tower Hamlets area ranked second (8,679 appointments per FTE GP), followed by Heathrow Medical Centre in Hillingdon (8,501).

NHS Digital says the figures it publishes do ‘not show the totality of GP activity/workload’.

When they are not seeing patients, GPs triage requests, process prescriptions and carry out other admin tasks as well as visiting care homes and undertaking training.

Dennis Reed, director of senior citizen campaign group Silver Voices, told the Daily Mail: ‘The varying practices across the country can offer far more face-to-face appointments depending on where you live, some are full up and others appear to hardly see any at all.

‘If you go into quite a few waiting GP surgery rooms, there’s hardly anybody there at all because appointments are done either over the phone or virtually.

‘We are very worried about the postcode lottery on access to GPs and that’s all been brought into relief by the changes to GP availability announced this week.’

He added: ‘The industrial action is a real counterintuitive move because people are being forced into online appointments, which doctors said not long ago they wanted more of. You really do wonder sometimes whether they want to see patients at all.’

Shimeon Lee, policy analyst at the Taxpayers Alliance, told the Daily Mail: ‘Taxpayers won’t be surprised at the yawning disparity between the most productive and efficient GP practices and the least, with this pattern being found in NHS services right across the board.

‘But what is troubling is that this isn’t delivering value for money for the NHS given funding for GPs is calculated on a per patient, not per appointment basis. 

‘This suggests that some particularly quiet practices may be taking the mickey with the number of patients they’re seeing.

‘Ministers need to explore ways to match up unusually busy GP practices with unusually quiet ones to ensure the best allocation of patients around the system. And for all reforms ministers need to be willing to stand up to unions standing in the way of necessary improvements.’

Under the BMA guidance, anything above 1,600 appointments per doctor between the beginning of May and the end of July would technically be unsafe and equate to an average of more than 25 a day. Some days will, however, be busier than others.

Nearly three quarters of practices (73.2%) fell short of that figure. 

Access to GP appointments has been a bugbear of patients for years, with getting a slot likened to securing a ticket to Glastonbury because of the hated 8am phone line scramble.

In total, there are now over 28,000 fully-qualified full-time GPs in England. Numbers have dwindled over the past decade despite attempts to recruit thousands more.

Many are retiring in their 50s, moving abroad or leaving to work in the private sector because of soaring demand, paperwork and aggressive media coverage of the NHS.

At the same time, the population has also grown, exacerbating the problem.

Patient satisfaction has plunged to its lowest level in four decades as a result of the never-ending appointments crisis.

Mr Streeting has vowed to make it easier for patients to access their GP practice.

Defending his changes to make all surgeries allow patients to book appointments online, he said there were ‘clear’ safeguards already in place.

He added that it was ‘absurd’ people can book a haircut online but some GPs still refuse to let patients make appointments in the same way.

Many surgeries already have a system that allows patients to request consultations online, with staff reviewing these and booking appointments accordingly.

But the Department of Health says there is a lack of consistency, with some surgeries choosing to switch the function off in busier periods.

Stephen Kinnock, care minister, said: ‘We promised to tackle the 8am scramble and make it easier for patients to access their GP practice – and through our Plan for Change, that’s exactly what we’re delivering.

‘We are bringing our analogue health service into the digital era, giving patients greater choice and convenience. We’ve learned from GPs who are already offering this service and reaping the rewards.

‘We’ve invested an extra £1.1billion in general practice – the biggest increase in over a decade – and hired an extra 2,000 GPs across England. 

‘There’s more to do, but this government is fixing the front door to the NHS.’

The British Medical Association (BMA) disputed the analysis, calling it a ‘simplistic and crude’ interpretation. 

General practitioners committee England chair Dr Katie Bramall said: ‘Of course there is a wide variation in the types of practices we see across the country and the populations they serve.

‘For example, practices in university towns may be much busier with one-off appointments, compared with those in rural villages with an older population, who may have fewer, but longer appointments with patients living with long-term conditions.

‘There are also specialist practices that deliver particular services to specific patient groups, such as those for homeless or vaccine clinics.

‘We have lost one in four surgeries since 2010 and have 1,000 fewer GPs compared with 2015.

‘However, GPs are working tirelessly to meet demand and ensure patient needs are met across the country.’

Helen Maguire, Liberal Democrat primary care and cancer spokesperson, said: ‘Millions of people are being left to anxiously wait for weeks just to see their GP, after the Conservatives left our NHS primary care in crisis. 

‘Instead of helping GPs hire more staff where they’re desperately needed, the Government’s ill-thought through National Insurance contributions (NICs) tax is forcing already struggling surgeries to cut back. 

‘Liberal Democrats have been calling on the Government to guarantee patients the right to see their GP within a week or 24 hours in urgent cases and unless we fix primary care and cut GP wait times, there will only be further pressure on A&E departments, costing the NHS even more money.’

Figures analysed by the Mail include all appointments with either a GP or ‘unknown’ professional but excludes the ‘other’ category, which might cover nurses, health visitors, physiotherapists, chiropodists or councillors, to name a few.

Under the NHS’s own definitions, a GP working 37.5 hours per week who is absent due to sickness for a week ‘is still a member of the practice’s workforce and is counted in the statistics with an FTE and headcount of one’.

Some FTE calculations are also ‘partial estimates’ calculated by the NHS as a result of incomplete or invalid data supplied by the practices. 

The NHS said there were 64 working days between May and July. Thousands of appointments do happen on Saturdays and Sundays but they make up around 0.3% of the total.

Some practices may have merged during the timeframe which would alter the figures for appointments carried out over the three-month period. 

NHS figures also appear to indicate that the summer of 2025 will be the busiest on record for general practice teams.

The figures were averaged across GPs. For instance, one might have done the bulk of the work. 

Additionally, patients can still have multiple appointments booked with other clinicians at their practice where necessary, for example with the practice nurses and pharmacists.

Finally, flawed NHS data collection has been persistently reported by organisations and individuals in the health sector for years.

The Department for Health and Social Care was approached for comment.  

 What the GP surgeries named said

Dr Ben Davies of the Jesmond Health Partnership said: ‘We have been utilising an online consulting tool (which the Government has been keen to see implemented across the country) for nearly five years. 

‘This innovation allows us to provide a very responsive service to our patients with 94% of Patients describing is as a service they would Highly Recommend / Recommend. 80% of all our patient contacts are resolved on the day we receive them. We receive over 2.5k requests for advice and support from on a weekly basis.

‘Unfortunately, these tools do not directly feed data into the systems that the Government has historically used to collect the data you have cited and therefore the number of appointments in the dataset you provided will be a significant underestimate of the patients we help on a daily or weekly basis.’

A spokesperson for NHS Birmingham and Solihull said: ‘In Birmingham and Solihull, we have already seen significant improvements in primary care including increases in the number of appointments and the number of GPs working in the system. 

‘But we know there is more to do and have a plan, developed alongside GPs, to deliver further improvements over the coming weeks and months.

‘Through our unique GP Provider Support Unit, we work alongside primary care staff and are already working with these practices. Both have challenges in the way data for appointments and number of WTE GPs are reported and have acknowledged that. 

‘We are working with them to improve their processes to ensure that future data gives an accurate picture and we expect that to show an improvement.’

Dr Steven Edgar, a Partner at Millbrook Surgery, in Somerset, said: ‘Our consulting rooms are full from the start to the finish of the working day and we deal with many issues over the phone and online as part of our approach to great patient access. 

‘GP patient survey data shows 90% of patients describe our practice as good, and the proportion of patients who say they usually get to see or speak to their preferred healthcare professional is far higher than the national average. 

‘We have a fantastic team of specialists and professionals and we have a good record of making sure our patients see the right clinician for their needs.’ 

A spokesperson from NHS South Yorkshire said: ‘The data provided is not recognised and appears to be incorrect. There are significant differences between practice appointment mapping and counting so some practices count all online consultation activity as appointments and elsewhere is not yet captured the same with enhanced access appointments, therefore this will show a significant difference in data recording.’