Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of GP-to-patient ratios in (a) Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency and (b) North Yorkshire in each of the last five years.

Each general practice (GP) is required to provide services to meet the reasonable needs of their patients. There is no recommendation from NHS England for how many patients a GP should have assigned, or the ratio of GPs or other practice staff to patients.

The demands each patient places on their GP are different and can be affected by many different factors, including rurality and patient demographics. It is necessary to consider the workforce for each practice as a whole, not only the GPs but also including the range of health professionals available who are able to respond to the needs of their patients. The following table shows the full-time equivalent (FTE) doctor to patient ratios in the Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency, for the last five years:

While it is not possible to provide data specifically for the county of North Yorkshire, the following table shows the FTE GP doctor to patient ratios within the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), for the last five years:

Notes:

1. the data does not include estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid staff records;
2. doctors in GP includes both fully qualified GPs and GPs in training grades;
3. FTE refers to the proportion of full-time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work, as one would indicate they work a full set of hours, 37.5 hours, and 0.5 would indicate that they worked half time;
4. in the GPs in Training Grade contracts, one FTE equals 40 hours, and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard Workforce Minimum Data Set measure, of one FTE equalling 37.5 hours, for consistency;
5. figures shown do not include staff working in Prisons, Army Bases, Educational Establishments, Specialist Care Centres, including Drug Rehabilitation Centres, Walk-In Centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional GPs, such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units;
6. practices in the Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency were identified using practice postcodes and the National Statistics Postcode Lookup; and
7. at both an ICB and constituency level, practices have been assigned to these geographies using their 2024 boundaries.