NHS GP Contact Difficulties Nearly Halved in a Year, ONS Data Shows

The share of adults in England who struggled to reach their GP practice fell from 18.7 per cent to 10.6 per cent between summer 2024 and spring 2025, according to official ONS survey data commissioned by NHS England.

The proportion of adults finding it “difficult” or “very difficult” to contact their GP practice dropped by nearly half in less than a year. The figures show that 18.7 per cent of adults reported difficulty in wave one of the Health Insight Survey, covering 23 July to 15 August 2024, compared with 10.6 per cent in wave twelve, covering 27 May to 18 June 2025.

The Office for National Statistics posted details of the latest dataset release — dated 18 June 2026 — on social media, pointing to the full analysis of adults’ experiences across GP services, NHS waiting lists, community health, dentistry and pharmacy in England.

Poor GP experiences also fell over the same period. Adults rating their overall GP practice experience as “poor” or “very poor” dropped from 15.0 per cent in wave one to 10.9 per cent in wave twelve. By wave fourteen — covering 22 July to 13 August 2025 — 73 per cent of adults who had tried to contact their GP practice in the previous 28 days described the experience as “good”. Those contacting for a prescription were the most positive group, at 77.8 per cent.

Community health services scored higher still. Some 84.6 per cent of adults who had an NHS community health appointment in the same period rated it “good”, with district and community nursing reaching 92.1 per cent and rehabilitation services 91.1 per cent.

Kent residents’ experiences feed into these England-wide figures through the national sampling frame. There are no Kent-specific breakdowns in the publicly available ONS bulletins, so whether trends in Medway, East Kent or West Kent mirror the national picture isn’t confirmed by this data alone. NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board, Kent County Council and Medway Council can use the national benchmarks alongside local data to assess where gaps remain.

But the ONS itself flags that these are “official statistics in development”, meaning methodology may still be refined. And critics point out that improved survey scores can sit alongside persistent workforce pressures and patchy NHS dentistry access — concerns that apply in parts of Kent as much as anywhere in England. Adults who received clear information about who to contact, how to manage their condition, and how to handle appointments were most likely to rate their waiting-list experience as “good”, the data show — a finding that may inform how local services communicate with patients.