Winter Demand View
How demand on general practice rises in winter, per working day · October to March shaded
Latest appointments data September 2026
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The winter case ·
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Same-day appointments: meeting winter demand in general practice ·
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Default: PSSRU Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2025, GP consultation of 10 minutes, including qualifications. Change it to your own local rate if you have one.
This is an indicative figure: the extra same-day appointments seen last winter multiplied by the cost per appointment. It is not a budget, and it is not a saving elsewhere in the system.
Demand that does not show up as appointments: online and phone ·
System view: what general practice provides in winter
Winter uplift by practice ·
PracticePCNList size Summer / working dayWinter / working day Winter upliftOctober uplift Same-day % (Jan)Appts / 1,000 (Jan)
Demand per working day ·
Shaded bands mark October to March each year. Appointments, online consultations, phone calls and 111 bookings are shown per working day (weekdays excluding English bank holidays); A&E attendances per calendar day. Dashed lines on the appointments chart are the summer and winter averages for the selected winter.
PCN, borough and practice figures come from the practice-level appointments publication (one row per practice per month); the sub-ICB, ICB and national figures come from the area-level publication, so the two can differ slightly. Appointments per 1,000 use each practice’s latest registered list; blank means the list size is not available or the month is not loaded yet.
What this page shows
How much demand on general practice rises in winter, and how much extra same-day capacity it takes to meet it. It describes activity in general practice. It does not estimate any effect on A&E attendances or hospital admissions.
Working days
Weekdays in the month excluding English bank holidays (hard-coded list from December 2023 to December 2027). All appointment, online-consultation, phone and 111 figures are divided by the working days in each month so months of different length compare fairly.
Exclude planned clinics
Removes appointments in the national category “Planned Clinics”, where flu and other vaccination clinics are recorded, from the appointment counts, per-working-day figures, the winter case figures and the uplift tables. “Planned Clinical Procedure” (for example dressings and injections) stays in. Same-day and DNA figures stay on all appointments because the publication does not split those by category. Area levels use the sub-ICB category publication (January 2024 onwards); practice, PCN and borough levels use the practice-level files. About 14% of appointments nationally carry an “Inconsistent Mapping” category and cannot be classified.
Winter and summer
Winter = December, January and February (“Winter 2025/26” is December 2025 to February 2026). Summer = June, July and August of the preceding year. Uplift % = (winter per working day ÷ summer per working day) − 1. October uplift compares October with that summer. The shaded October to March window is used for the extra appointments totals.
Extra appointments over October to March
For each month from October to March: (appointments per working day in that month − summer appointments per working day) × working days in that month, added up. It is the number of appointments above the summer level that general practice provided over the winter.
GP appointments for each A&E attendance
Winter GP appointments per working day divided by winter type 1 A&E attendances per calendar day, for the same months. It shows the relative size of the two services. It is shown at sub-ICB, ICB and national level only, where the A&E trusts cover broadly the same population.
Run-rate
The latest three months available for the selected level, per working day, as a percentage of the selected winter.
Same-day appointments
Appointments booked and seen on the same day. Extra same-day appointments per working day = winter same-day per working day − summer same-day per working day; the winter total uses the October to March method above.
Indicative cost
Extra same-day appointments over October to March × the cost per appointment you enter (default £48, PSSRU Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2025, GP consultation of 10 minutes including qualifications). It is a rough cost of the extra activity, not a budget and not a saving. Starting from a funding amount does the reverse: funding ÷ cost per appointment.
Appointments
NHS England Appointments in General Practice. Sub-ICB, ICB and national figures sum the sub-ICB-level publication (national = all sub-ICBs; where the England total is already held it is used directly). Practice, PCN and borough figures use the practice-level publication; PCN and borough = sum of their practices. DNA = did not attend.
Region
The NHS England region of the selected practice (for example London), summed from the sub-ICB publication. A&E uses the trusts of the region’s ICBs; NHS 111 uses the regional series.
Boroughs
North Central London only. Each PCN is assigned to the borough its practices are in (Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington).
Online consultations
NHS England Submissions via Online Consultation Systems, total submissions per practice, summed to the selected level.
Phone calls
NHS England Cloud-Based Telephony: inbound calls per practice, summed; “answered within 2 minutes” is the share of answered calls in the time-to-answer buckets up to 120 seconds. Missed = inbound calls that ended before being answered (indicator CBT002), as a share of inbound calls; some of these callers ring back or ask for a callback. Only practices on cloud telephony report; the number reporting is shown next to the figures. The day-of-week chart uses the daily figures in the same publication, over October to March of the selected winter, leaving out bank holidays.
A&E
NHS England A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions: type 1 (major) attendances per calendar day. North Central London views below ICB level use the North Central London trusts (Royal Free London, including North Middlesex, Whittington Health and University College London Hospitals). Other areas use the trusts mapped to their ICB. The ICB level for North Central London is the merged West and North London ICB. National = England.
NHS 111
NHS England Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection. 111 is published by 111 contract area, region and England only, so it is never split by practice or PCN. North Central London and North West London views use their own 111 area, and the West and North London ICB uses both; other areas use their region. Figures are 111 calls booked directly into general practice, the share of answered 111 calls booked into general practice, and the share of 111 dispositions to primary care (calls where the outcome was to contact or attend primary care, in and out of core hours together). These are calls to NHS 111, not to the practice; practice phone lines are under Phone calls.
Data availability (live)
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Figures describe recorded activity, not all underlying demand, and are affected by coding and reporting practice. Nothing on this page is patient-identifiable.

Sources: NHS England Appointments in General Practice, Submissions via Online Consultation Systems, Cloud-Based Telephony, A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions and Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection (NHS 111); PSSRU Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2025. For the monthly appointments benchmark see Appointments in General Practice; for the forecast see Forward View.

Data sources: NHS England: Appointments in General Practice ·NHS England: Cloud-Based Telephony and Online Consultation submissions ·NHS England: A&E Attendances and NHS 111 (IUC ADC)