General Practice and Primary Care Network Workforce Data for England

The data is required to inform workforce planning at a local, regional and national level. The data is used extensively by key stakeholders such as the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and within NHS England. It informs policy and is used to support training, recruitment and retention activities. The findings from the collection are used to monitor progress towards required staffing levels and allow for timely interventions to be made.

Aggregate data, for both the General Practice Workforce and PCN Workforce, is published on a monthly basis. General Practice Workforce Data is also used to support the publication of the GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates, which are published on an annual basis.

General Practice Workforce Data has also been made available for external dissemination via the NHS England Data Access Request Service (DARS). Oversight is provided by the Advisory Group for Data (AGD) where appropriate.

This Notice is served on:

• general practices 
• Primary Care Networks (PCNs)  

The first collection of data took place in July 2021 giving a snapshot of the workforce as of that time point. Previous collections have utilised different tools and been collected at different frequencies. The collection is ongoing and the data extracted on a monthly basis.

The NWRS extraction timetable provides the latest information regarding when the data will be collected.

The General Practice and PCN Workforce publications are produced on the last day of each month. The publication webpages for both list the planned publication dates for future releases.

Due to the timing of the self-assessment tax returns process, the processing of data used to support the publication of GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates Official Statistics cannot begin until the end of the following tax year and the official statistics are not published until approximately 16 months after the end of the applicable financial year. For example, the GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates for 2021- 2022 were not published until August 2023, the earliest point at which the figures could be produced.

Future publication timescales are yet to be confirmed for the GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates but the data is likely to be published in August each year.

7 May 2024: Version 2.0 of this Data Provision Notice issued to reflect the sharing of General Practice Workforce Data with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to support the production of the GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates Official Statistics, to bring up to date the purposes for which General Practice and Primary Care Network Workforce Data is collected, to better reflect the persons with which NHS England has consulted to establish and operate the data collection, to clarify the latest estimate of the associated burden of the data collection and to reflect legal and organisational changes which came into effect on 1 October 2021, 1 July 2022 and 1 February 2023.