How many more GPs has the government recruited?

In recent months the government has made many claims about the number of extra GPs it has recruited to the health service in England.

Between October and December last year, the Prime Minister, health secretary and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) all said the government had put over 2,500 more GPs into general practice.

And the figure has risen since then. At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, the Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy claimed the government had “recruited 3,000 more GPs”.

But has it? That depends on what you think the government means—because the actual rise in the overall number of full-time GPs in the NHS is smaller.

We know where the figure comes from. Last year the DHSC confirmed with us that an earlier version referred to the number of GPs hired through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS).

The ARRS allows primary care networks (groups of neighbouring GP practices) to hire more staff by covering their salaries and some of the other associated costs. From October 2024 onwards the government expanded the scheme to include recently qualified GPs themselves.

And it is true that the figures up to the end of September 2025 show a total of 2,533 GPs were confirmed to have been hired under the scheme since its expansion, while in more recent data up to the end of December 2025, this total had risen to 3,073.

But there are some important things to bear in mind here.

Firstly, these numbers are headcounts, so they include GPs hired on a part-time basis. The actual number of full-time equivalent (FTE) GPs claimed for under the scheme is less.

Secondly, the headcount figure represents the total number of individual GPs recruited under ARRS over the entire period, so it counts some GPs who are not currently employed under the scheme. The ARRS data shows that in November 2025, the most recent month for which data is available, there were 2,122 GPs recorded as working for the scheme, representing 1,416 full-time equivalent GPs. These numbers are often revised as new ARRS claims come in month by month.

How has the total GP workforce changed?

These figures only count GPs hired through ARRS, and they don’t capture those recruited in other ways. Besides which, GPs are also leaving their jobs at the same time, so the total number available for work in the NHS doesn’t simply rise by the total that are hired.

Figuring out the total number of working GPs can get complicated, however.

The official General Practice Workforce data reports the number of NHS GPs and other general practice staff at the end of each month. But GPs hired through ARRS are employed by the primary care networks, not the practices themselves, which means their numbers are reported in the Primary Care Network Workforce data instead. To make matters worse, the NHS acknowledges that some employers might report their staff in the wrong way.

So NHS England publishes a quarterly series of combined data showing “workforce full-time equivalent (FTE) figures for traditional 'high street' General (Medical) Practices, Primary Care Networks and alternative primary care settings”. This source of data is less often used, but it does show us the total number of FTE GPs at a given time.

This data set doesn’t give precise figures for the net rise since October 2024, but if you count from September 2024, and you exclude GPs in training (meaning those who have not yet fully qualified as GPs) then the number of fully qualified FTE GPs in the NHS rose by 1,347 in the year to September 2025.

Is the 3,000 figure wrong then?

To sum up, it’s true that more than 2,500 GPs were recruited into the NHS England workforce through the ARRS in the first year after the government expanded it—and that this has reached more than 3,000 in the latest figures.

However, this doesn’t tell us how many more GPs there now are, because some hiring may have taken place outside the ARRS, and other GPs have left their jobs in the same period. Some of the new hires are also part-time. The actual overall rise in the number of full-time equivalent GPs working for NHS England in the first year was more like 1,300.

Clearly this figure might not have risen as much if the government hadn’t expanded the ARRS programme, but it’s important to take claims of 2,500 or 3,000 more GPs with a pinch of salt.

When we asked the DHSC why the government quotes a headcount figure for the number of GPs recruited via ARRS, rather than an overall figure for the net change in full-time equivalent GPs, a spokesperson told us: “We currently have the highest number of fully qualified GPs since at least 2015 thanks to actions taken by this government.

“We are making progress to reverse more than a decade of neglect of primary care, with patient satisfaction with GP services rising and 3,000 GPs recruited into work in the past year. We are also delivering a record £1 billion boost and funding vital upgrades to surgeries, as well as cutting red tape so doctors can spend more time caring for patients.”