Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time was for a GP appointment in (a) Rotherham Borough, (b) South Yorkshire and (c) Rother Valley in each of the last 12 months.

Data showing the time between booking an appointment with a general practice and the appointment taking place for practices in NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) in the 12 months from January 2019 to December 2019 is presented in the attached table.

NHS Digital publishes ‘Appointments in General Practice’. This is an experimental data collection which is still being refined and improved. NHS Digital is unable to provide appointments in general practice data at the level requested. Rotherham Borough, South Yorkshire and Rother Valley do not align perfectly to a CCG; it has therefore provided data NHS Rotherham CCG and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw STP.

It should be noted that the ‘time from booking to appointment’ refers only to the time elapsed between the successful booking of an appointment and the appointment taking place. The data does not take into consideration that many patients will be appropriately booking ahead as part of the continuity of care they receive for long-term conditions.