Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GPs there were in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last 10 years; and how many GP vacancies there were in those areas in each of the last 10 years.

The data for Coventry North East constituency, Coventry and the West Midlands is not collected in the format requested, as general practice workforce data is not collected by constituency, city level or geographical region. The number of full-time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice in England between September 2021 and September 2015, the latest date for which comparable data exists, is shown in the following table.

Source: NHS Digital

Notes:

1. FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. One would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In GPs in Training Grade contracts one FTE equals 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard measure of 1 FTE equals 37.5 hours for consistency.

2. 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 general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.

3. Figures from September 2015 and September 2016 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. The reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower than the true picture. In September 2015, which was the first extract from the new Workforce Minimum Data Set, only three of four Health Education England regions submitted data. Consequently, September 2015 figures should be treated with additional caution.

4. Data from September 2021 is the third release to be based on the monthly collection of general practice workforce information. Following stakeholder feedback and the move to monthly publications NHS Digital are reviewing the implementation of methodological changes introduced in the June 2021 publication. Until this review is complete, all published figures remain provisional and is not presented in a time series. The time series will be reinstated once the review has been concluded and a methodology agreed.

5. Data as at the last day of the applicable month.

The data requested on vacancies in these areas are not collected centrally.