Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) doctors completing GP training and (b) available GP posts.

NHS England produces regular forecasts of the numbers of doctors due to complete General Practitioner (GP) training. Latest data show that for 2025/26, 1,964 doctors completed GP training between 1 April and 21 August 2025 with a further 2,733 doctors forecast to complete GP training by 31 March 2026. Estimated completion dates are produced by GP educators based on doctors’ individual progress so are subject to change.

As practices do not have fixed establishment positions against which they report vacancies, we do not collect and publish data on vacancies in general practice.

The Government committed to recruiting over 1,000 recently qualified GPs in primary care networks (PCNs) through an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) over 2024/25, as part of an initiative to secure the future pipeline of GPs, with over 1,000 doctors otherwise likely to have graduated into unemployment in 2024/25. This funding has been continued into 2025/26.

Data on the number of recently qualified GPs for which PCNs are claiming reimbursement via the ARRS show that, since 1 October 2024, over 2,000 GPs were recruited through the scheme. Several changes have been made to increase the flexibility of ARRS in 2025/26. This includes GPs and practice nurses included in the main ARRS funding pot, an uplift of the maximum reimbursable rate for GPs in the scheme, and no caps on the number of GPs that can be employed through the scheme.