General guidance on using the NWRS

1. Log into SDCS and use the Select organisation drop-down.

2. All the organisations you have access to will be available here.

3. If you need access to another organisation then please email us with the following details: 

• first name and last name 
• email address (for a personal NHS or healthcare service email address and not a generic mailbox or Hotmail / Gmail, for example) 
• ODS codes for the organisations you want access to (GP and/or PCN) 
• confirmation that either your practice manager or a practice partner approves your request this can simply be an email confirmation in an attachment.

Staff records that are updated as in progress are not visible to NHS England. 

If a record is marked as being in progress please update the record as necessary and then select the submit button. This is located in the check your answers before sending page.

If all the mandatory information has been provided we will receive  a completed record in the data extract.

The record will display as being submitted in your staff table.  Further information is available in the using the service to view data section. 

If there is an error you will see an error message on the entry with an error. 

This data collection is live and continuous. We extract data on the last day of the month at midnight for all organisations so we can publish our monthly primary care workforce statistics. You can still provide retrospective information if you need to, but previously published statistics will not be revised.

As the collection is continuous and your data remain in the system, you can provide retrospective updates at any time. However, our workforce statistics are produced with a short turnaround from extracts taken at the end of each month so these are not revised following extraction; you would need to wait until data from the extract at the next month end is published to see your changes in our official statistics.

The only exception is the working hours for locums (occasional and Infrequent) are collected and published for the latest three months these can be updated until the month is moved on so in August you would be able to provide updated June figures until the August extract is taken on the 31 August. The July field would still be in the system until 30 September.

It is essential to keep NWRS data up to date for workforce planning and funding purposes.

As a minimum, we would expect someone from each organisation to log in and review their data each month (preferably near the end of the month to ensure that data reflects the current position when extracted to produce and publish primary care Workforce statistics).

We recommend that any staff changes are recorded as soon as possible to avoid backlog of updates at the end of each month. Logging in acts as confirmation that your organisation has reported its workforce for the month.

Last logged in and last modified dates are published in our data quality dashboard each week, and are monitored by NHS England regional leads, so you may be contacted if there has been a substantial period without activity.

NWRS data is not submitted as such -  the system is live so all you need to do is log in towards the end of the month, review your records and makes any updates required.

Logging in is recorded so you do not need to do anything else. These activities are monitored by stakeholders so please ensure you do this once per month at least to review your data.

The time lag from data submission to publication of statistics is around a month. Data are extracted from NWRS on the last day of each month and cleaned and analysed before publication as Official Statistics. Rough staff counts for data quality purposes are available on via the Data Quality Dashboard. These are updated every week (but are not broken down, other than a separate count for GPs at each practice). Note that these are not official figures and should not be used as such.

We send email reminders to all registered users of the NWRS system towards the end of each month. These also contain details of recent developments, updates, and forthcoming events. If you have reviewed your data (and updated if required) then you do not need to take any action.

A list of all staff groups and roles available in NWRS and values for other fields are available from the NWRS support page and the appendix page. 

If you need to know the fields required in NWRS in advance, you can download the NWRS system specification document from our guidance page.

Absence and vacancy data is not currently required as part of the NWRS. 

If you need further support you can contact us by emailing [email protected].

You can also check our website for details of additional support available we run regular webinars for data providers, and we can provide individual support sessions if required.