GP practices in Morecambe Bay where patients are most likely to wait longer than two weeks for an appointment have been revealed in new figures.

The Government said the new data published by NHS Digital – which gives detailed information on appointments and waiting times for individual GP practices across England – will help patients "make a more informed choice about the practice they choose to visit".

But the move has not been welcomed by everyone, with the Royal College of GPs criticising the lack of context around how different practices operate.

A total of 172,184 appointments took place at GP practices in the former NHS Morecambe Bay CCG area in October.

At least 32,406 (19%) of these had taken place more than a fortnight after being booked, and of those, 9,262 (5%) saw patients wait longer than 28 days.

In Morecambe Bay, the practices with the highest proportion of appointments occurring after a fortnight were:

  • The James Cochrane Pract. – 40.1% of 9,866 appointments took place more than two weeks after they had been booked in October.
  • Dalton Surgery – 35% of 4,432 appointments.
  • Lunesdale Surgery – 29.4% of 3,509 appointments.
  • St. Mary's Surgery – 26.7% of 2,726 appointments.
  • Captain French Surgery – 26.7% of 4,969 appointments.

At the other end of the scale:

  • The Family Practice – just 1.4% of 1,583 appointments saw patients wait longer than a fortnight in October
  • Duddon Valley Medical Practice – 2.6% of 1,929 appointments
  • Abbey Road Surgery – 3.9% of 3,353 appointments
  • Lancaster Medical Practice – 8% of 27,087 appointments
  • Cartmel Surgery – 9.2% of 1,810 appointments

NHS Digital cautioned that GP workloads can be affected by several factors such as the demographic of patients registered at the practice, how deprived the area is and the number of care homes the practice offers services to.

The new practice-level figures come as part of the Government's "plan for patients", which includes a new ambition for every patient to get an appointment at their GP practice within two weeks.

However, the RCGP said the Government should address the root cause of GP pressures – including recruitment and retention of doctors – "instead of lumbering a struggling service with new expectations".

Chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: "A record 36.1 million consultations were delivered in October, almost 40% of these on the day they were booked and more than 71% delivered in-person, the highest proportion since before the pandemic."

Prof Hawthorne said GP workloads have escalated while the number of fully qualified full-time equivalent GPs has fallen by 719 across England since 2019.

"GP teams are just as frustrated as patients when they don’t have the resources and time to deliver the high standard of care to patients they want to, and in some areas where the pressures are even greater, this is happening more," she added.