England GP Practices Lose £40 Million After Removing 300,000 Patients from Registers

GB News reported that GP practices in England have 63.4 million patients on their registers, compared with an England population of 58.6 million. The gap produces roughly £650 million in additional annual funding because practices receive about £130 per registered patient.

The British Medical Association stated that NHS England has directed surgeries to remove patients who do not respond to contact attempts within three months, shortened from the prior six-month window.

Over the past year this list-cleansing reduced practice lists by more than 300,000 patients and cut funding to surgeries by almost £40 million. Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, said the registration mismatch reflects an outdated system built for paper records.

He stated that patients should be able to receive routine care at any convenient practice because records are now accessible across surgeries.

Heneghan added that students returning home and workers relocating should not remain tied to a single surgery. He compared the current model to requiring a car owner to return to one specific garage for an MOT. An unnamed NHS advisor said multiple NHS databases still cannot communicate with one another.

The advisor noted that the service operates in 2026 with technology comparable to an abacus and printing press. Dr Chand Nagpaul warned that aggressive list-cleansing carries a high risk of removing genuine patients by mistake, especially older people, those with learning disabilities, residents of houses in multiple occupation and patients whose first language is not English.