| MainStaffGroup | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin/Non-Clinical | 3.0% | 18.7% | 9.7% |
| Doctor | 4.7% | 3.1% | 0.6% |
| Nurse | 4.6% | 17.6% | 10.6% |
| Other Direct Patient Care | 5.9% | 16.5% | 7.3% |
General Practice Workforce Survey 2025
Official statistics in Development
This report is published as Official Statistics in Development. Official statistics in development are official statistics that are undergoing a development; they may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
1 Executive Summary
As at 31 March 2025:
- The GP whole time equivalent (WTE) (excluding Specialist Trainees) was 3,591.5 WTE, an increase of 4% from 3,453.1 WTE in 2024.
- The whole time equivalent of nurses in General Practice was 1,735.7 WTE an increase of 1.5%.
- The total WTE in Other Direct Clinical Care occupations was 500.6 WTE.
- There were 9,359 administrative and non-clinical staff, 61% of whom are receptionists.
- The GP vacancy rate was 3.8%, a decrease from 7.6% at 31 March 2024.
- The nursing vacancy rate was 2.8%, a decrease from 4.1% at 31 March 2024.
During the year ending 31 March 2025:
- The sickness absence rate for GPs was 1.8%, down from 3.0% in 2023/24. For other occupations the sickness absence rate was 2.2%, down from 3.0% in 2023/24.
- GP practices in Scotland reported using 279 WTE Locums, similar to last year.
- The percentage of practices using locums has remained stable. Most NHS Boards saw an increase in the percent of required locum sessions that were filled.
2 Introduction
This release by NHS Education for Scotland provides information on the number of General Practitioners (GPs), Nurses and other General Practice staff in Scotland on 31 March 2025. Vacancies, Absences and use of GP locum staff during the year ending 31 March 2025 are also reported.
The General Practice workforce survey was last carried out in 2024. Surveys prior to 2023 were published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and can be found on PHS’s website.
Background information, a glossary and links to other reports on the Primary Care workforce from across the UK can be found on our website.
This report is accompanied by a series of data tables providing users with additional detail on the results of previous surveys and an interactive dashboard.
3 Methods
3.1 Survey data collection
The survey was run by NHS National Services Scotland and sent out to GP Practices in Scotland using a Microsoft PowerApp.
Practices are asked to complete four sections on their staff for the year ending 31 March 2025:
- a list of staff who are employed by their practice,
- a list of vacancies in their practice,
- the total number of absent sessions (for GPs) or hours for all other staff in each month.
- the number of locum sessions that their practice required and how many of them were filled
Performer Registrars (medical practitioners in a GP training program) and staff who only work on a locum basis were excluded from the analysis.
A number of minor updates were made to the survey this year,
- Absences were collected for each month during the year
- For vacancies practices were asked if they were actively seeking a candidate, and if not the reason for this.
3.2 Sample data weighting
The response rate was less than 100% so weights have been applied to provide representative estimates at NHS Board and national levels.
Apart from GP Headcounts, which have been calculated from the National Primary Care Clinicians Database, all statistics presented here have been calculated using weighted estimates. In survey reports before 2022 weights may not have been applied to some statistics, with figures reported based on the survey sample data alone. Previous survey reports will be clear where weighted estimates have and have not been used.
Table 1 describes the different weightings used for each measure in this report.
| Staff Group | Measure | Weighting Used |
|---|---|---|
| General Practitioners | WTE | GP headcounts* |
| Contracted sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Vacant sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Locum sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Absent sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Practices using locums | Practice response rates per board | |
| Practices with vacancies | Practice response rates per board | |
| All Other Staff | WTE | Practice list sizes per board |
| Contracted hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Vacant hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Absent hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Practices with vacancies | Practice response rates per board |
*GP headcounts in combinations of Board, designation, age group and sex
3.3 Imputing missing data
We have also addressed missing data using data imputation methods. Missing data on contracted hours and GP sessions, and staff age have been imputed using a donor-based imputation that relies only on this year’s survey sample data for replacement values, and preserves existing relationships and distribution present in the sample data. These methods help to provide a more complete data set for analysis.
The number of records where imputed records were created is shown in Table 2 and Table 3.
| MainStaffGroup | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin/Non-Clinical | 1.5% | 0.0% | 1.1% |
| Doctor | 5.0% | 3.0% | 2.1% |
| Nurse | 1.9% | 0.1% | 1.7% |
| Other Direct Patient Care | 2.8% | 0.3% | 1.0% |
3.4 GP Headcount
The GP headcount are sourced from the National Primary Care Clinicians Database (NPCCD).
The NPCCD is a live administrative database, with data being updated over time. Although the published historic headcount time series in the NHS Scotland dashboard is updated when a new census date is available, the headcount presented here is not, this may cause some small differences between the two sets of data.
4 Results
4.1 GP Practices
4.1.1 Response rates
The overall response rate for the survey was 75.5%, with data submitted from 669 practices. Table 4 presents the response rate for each NHS Board and is based on the number of practices eligible to respond to the survey in March 2025. This is less than the previous year’s response, 84.6%. One possible reason for the reduction in the response rate was the deadline to respond was earlier, with the final extract of data from the system taken on the 16th of June 2025.
| HealthBoard | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 92.6% | 88.7% |
| NHS Borders | 81.8% | 59.1% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 84.4% | 53.1% |
| NHS Fife | 80.8% | 86.5% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 85.7% | 81.3% |
| NHS Grampian | 85.5% | 85.7% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 83.6% | 61.6% |
| NHS Highland | 83.5% | 70.3% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 80.0% | 87.2% |
| NHS Lothian | 92.2% | 87.0% |
| NHS Orkney | 85.7% | 85.7% |
| NHS Shetland | 55.6% | 50.0% |
| NHS Tayside | 81.7% | 74.6% |
| NHS Western Isles | 88.9% | 100.0% |
| Scotland | 84.6% | 75.5% |
4.1.2 Session Length
Session length varies between practices. The current BMA standards for a session of GP care is 4 hours 10 minutes, with a full time GP doing 8 sessions per week. The data collected by this survey shows that the most common session length recorded was 4 hours (29%), followed by 5 hours (25%). 16% reported that their session length was 4 hours 10 minutes. There was a high proportion (28%) of responding GP Practices who did not answer this question.
As session length can vary, this means the total number of hours worked by two GPs with the same WTE may be different.
4.2 Primary Care Workforce
The Primary Care survey asks about several different staff groups; General Practitioners, Nurses, Other Direct Clinical Care occupations and Admin and Clerical.
General Practitioners WTE is defined as 8 contracted sessions per week and for all other staff WTE is 37 hours per week.
4.2.1 General Practitioners
There were 4,582 General Practitioners (GPs) on 31 March 2025, equivalent to 3,591 WTE (Table 5).
| HealthBoard | Headcount | WTE | Mean WTE | WTE per 10,000 patients | Headcount per 10,000 patients |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 306 | 245.6 | 0.80 | 6.3 | 7.8 |
| NHS Borders | 103 | 81.1 | 0.79 | 6.7 | 8.5 |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 108 | 90.4 | 0.84 | 5.8 | 6.9 |
| NHS Fife | 283 | 220.4 | 0.78 | 5.6 | 7.1 |
| NHS Forth Valley | 241 | 185.7 | 0.77 | 5.6 | 7.3 |
| NHS Grampian | 461 | 361.0 | 0.78 | 5.7 | 7.3 |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 953 | 747.0 | 0.78 | 5.4 | 6.9 |
| NHS Highland | 379 | 300.0 | 0.79 | 8.8 | 11.2 |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 393 | 315.4 | 0.80 | 4.4 | 5.5 |
| NHS Lothian | 913 | 682.6 | 0.75 | 6.5 | 8.7 |
| NHS Orkney | 38 | 33.6 | 0.88 | 15.1 | 17.0 |
| NHS Shetland | 24 | 20.3 | 0.84 | 8.6 | 10.2 |
| NHS Tayside | 386 | 284.0 | 0.74 | 6.3 | 8.6 |
| NHS Western Isles | 30 | 24.3 | 0.81 | 9.0 | 11.1 |
| Scotland | 4,582 | 3,591.5 | 0.78 | 5.9 | 7.6 |
1. Doctors may work in more than one board, so the national total may not equal the sum of the Board totals.
GPs over time
Between 31 March 2024 and 31 March 2025, GP WTE increased by 4.0%.
Over the past 10 years, since 2015, GP Headcount has increased by 3.9% and estimated WTE has increased by 0.3%. (Figure 2 and Table 6)
Due to the way the WTE is calculated using a weighted estimate, confidence intervals have been added to the data for the past three years, (the years in which the data is available at the granularity required for these calculations).
| Year | Headcount | Headcount % change | WTE | WTE % change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 4,394 | 3,675.1 | ||
| 2015 | 4,410 | 0.4% | 3,603.7 | -1.9% |
| 2017 | 4,385 | -0.6% | 3,520.3 | -2.3% |
| 2019 | 4,400 | 0.3% | 3,613.0 | 2.6% |
| 2022 | 4,514 | 2.6% | 3,493.9 | -3.3% |
| 2023 | 4,474 | -0.9% | 3,478.4 | -0.4% |
| 2024 | 4,438 | -0.8% | 3,453.1 | -0.7% |
| 2025 | 4,582 | 3.2% | 3,591.5 | 4.0% |
GPs by designation
GPs are collectively termed ‘Performers’. These can be broken down into further sub-categories or designations.
The largest designation by both headcount and WTE was Performer GPs; this group also had the highest average WTE (Table 7).
| Year | DesignationGroup | Headcount | WTE | Mean WTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Performer | 3,079 | 2,532.5 | 0.82 |
| 2025 | Performer Salaried | 1,466 | 1,029.3 | 0.70 |
| 2025 | Performer Retainee | 56 | 29.6 | 0.53 |
| 2025 | All GPs | 4,582 | 3,591.5 | 0.78 |
1. Doctors may have more than one designation, so the national headcount may not equal the sum of the designation totals.
SIMD and Urban Rural
The mean GP WTE of GPs working in practices in the most deprived areas as measured by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) (0.71) on the 31 March 2025 was lower than the mean WTE of GPs working at practices in the least deprived areas (0.8) (Table 8).
| SIMD | Headcount | WTE | MeanWTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (Most Deprived) | 1,154 | 824.2 | 0.71 |
| 2 | 1,065 | 838.4 | 0.79 |
| 3 | 954 | 749.3 | 0.79 |
| 4 | 853 | 631.6 | 0.74 |
| 5 (Least Deprived) | 683 | 548.0 | 0.80 |
| UrbanRural | Headcount | WTE | MeanWTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large Urban Areas | 1,914 | 1,461.7 | 0.76 |
| Other Urban Areas | 1,516 | 1,175.8 | 0.78 |
| Accessible Small Towns | 509 | 397.5 | 0.78 |
| Remote Small Towns | 36 | 26.4 | 0.73 |
| Accessible Rural | 108 | 75.8 | 0.70 |
| Remote Rural | 316 | 224.1 | 0.71 |
| Very Remote Rural | 109 | 92.3 | 0.85 |
| Very Remote Small Towns | 173 | 137.9 | 0.80 |
Locums
Locums are not reported from NPCCD so are not included in the weighted numbers above. They are instead weighted by the Practice list sizes per board.
Within this report locums are reported in two separate ways. Locums who are on a longer term contract, e.g. covering an absence such as maternity leave, or a vacancy, are recorded in the staff census. Practices are also asked to record the total sessions provided by locums over the past year. This total is recorded in Section 4.6.
The below numbers are for those locums who GP practices have reported as part of their staff census.
GPs working in OOH Services
GPs can work both within practices, and provide OOH services. These hours are recorded in the OOH Survey. Matching by Registration number, 15% of the In hours workforce were also recorded as providing OOH services in 2025,
4.2.2 Nurses
There were 2,464 nurses in post in GP practices on 31 March 2025, equivalent to 1,735.7 WTE (Table 10).
| HealthBoard | Headcount | WTE | MeanWTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 160 | 125.6 | 0.78 |
| NHS Borders | 61 | 47.7 | 0.78 |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 95 | 63.9 | 0.67 |
| NHS Fife | 177 | 125.7 | 0.71 |
| NHS Forth Valley | 127 | 90.0 | 0.71 |
| NHS Grampian | 351 | 242.7 | 0.69 |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 425 | 288.8 | 0.68 |
| NHS Highland | 199 | 133.5 | 0.67 |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 266 | 198.0 | 0.74 |
| NHS Lothian | 316 | 216.7 | 0.69 |
| NHS Orkney | 30 | 21.9 | 0.73 |
| NHS Shetland | 40 | 28.2 | 0.70 |
| NHS Tayside | 193 | 135.8 | 0.70 |
| NHS Western Isles | 23 | 17.3 | 0.75 |
| Scotland | 2,464 | 1,735.7 | 0.70 |
1. Nurses may work across different Health Boards, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
Nurses over time
There was a 0.7% increase in nurse headcount and a 1.5% increase in WTE since the 2024 survey (Figure 5 and Table 11).
| Year | Headcount | WTE | HeadcountChange_perc | WTEChange_perc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2,125 | 1,420.0 | ||
| 2015 | 2,175 | 1,455.0 | 2.4% | 2.5% |
| 2017 | 2,297 | 1,541.0 | 5.6% | 5.9% |
| 2019 | 2,465 | 1,690.0 | 7.3% | 9.7% |
| 2022 | 2,414 | 1,689.5 | -2.1% | 0.0% |
| 2023 | 2,438 | 1,702.4 | 1.0% | 0.8% |
| 2024 | 2,447 | 1,710.3 | 0.4% | 0.5% |
| 2025 | 2,464 | 1,735.7 | 0.7% | 1.5% |
Designation
Data was collected on several different nursing roles.
The largest group was General Practice Nurses who accounted for 59.8% of the total headcount and 56.9% of the total WTE. The next largest group was Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP), accounting for for 31.6% of the total headcount and 35.9%of the total WTE (Figure 6).
There has been a slight increase in the proportion of the staff recorded as ANPs, with the proportion of Treatment room nurses decreasing.
Mean WTE
There was some variation in the mean WTE among nursing designations (Figure 7). ANPs had a mean WTE of 0.8 whereas General Practice Nurses had an mean WTE of 0.67.
SIMD and Urban Rural
Nurses have a similar Mean WholeTime equivalent across the SIMD Quintiles, with a mean WTE of 0.71 in the least deprived areas and a 0.7 in the most deprived areas.
| Year | SIMD | Headcount | WTE | MeanWTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | 567 | 401.4 | 0.71 |
| 2025 | 2 | 621 | 452.4 | 0.73 |
| 2025 | 3 | 513 | 352.7 | 0.69 |
| 2025 | 4 | 445 | 312.2 | 0.70 |
| 2025 | 5 | 339 | 237.6 | 0.70 |
| UrbanRural | Headcount | WTE | MeanWTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large Urban Areas | 887 | 618.4 | 0.70 |
| Other Urban Areas | 822 | 596.3 | 0.73 |
| Accessible Small Towns | 312 | 219.1 | 0.70 |
| Remote Small Towns | 29 | 23.1 | 0.79 |
| Accessible Rural | 102 | 75.5 | 0.74 |
| Remote Rural | 174 | 116.6 | 0.67 |
| Very Remote Rural | 60 | 35.9 | 0.60 |
| Very Remote Small Towns | 105 | 75.7 | 0.72 |
4.2.3 Other Direct Clinical Care occupations
In addition to GPs and nurses, there is a wide range of other clinical roles that make up the multi-disciplinary team within Primary Care (Table 14).
The most common role in this group were Health Care Assistants, 264.2WTE (415 headcount). The next most common groups were Pharmacists, Pharmacy Dispensers and Phlebotomists, with around 55 WTE in each role across Scotland.
The total WTE has decreased slightly between the 2024 and 2025 survey to 500.6 WTE.
| Staff role | Headcount | WTE | AverageWTE | HeadcountChange | WTEChange |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 786 | 500.6 | 0.64 | 0.6% | -0.5% |
| Health Care Assistant | 415 | 264.2 | 0.64 | -5.0% | -4.8% |
| Pharmacist | 100 | 62.9 | 0.63 | 13.6% | 8.8% |
| Phlebotomist | 92 | 50.2 | 0.55 | 19.5% | 19.2% |
| Dispenser | 76 | 55.2 | 0.73 | -8.4% | -4.2% |
| Other Clinical Role | 37 | 26.8 | 0.72 | 0.0% | -0.4% |
| Paramedic | 27 | 23.8 | 0.88 | 22.7% | 15.0% |
| Physiotherapist | 15 | 4.5 | 0.30 | 114.3% | 114.3% |
| Physician Associate | 13 | 10.2 | 0.78 | -31.6% | -35.0% |
| Therapist (including Counsellor) | 11 | 2.9 | 0.26 | 10.0% | 0.0% |
4.2.4 Administrative and Non-Clinical Staff
There were 9,358 administrative and non-clinical staff employed in Primary Care, with Receptionists making up 60.8% of the total headcount.
| Staff role | Headcount | WTE | HeadcountPercent | WTEPercent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receptionist | 5,687 | 4,177.2 | 60.8% | 59.7% |
| Other / Combined role | 1,441 | 1,051.6 | 15.4% | 15.0% |
| Practice Manager / Manager | 1,200 | 1,053.3 | 12.8% | 15.1% |
| Medical Secretary | 706 | 543.1 | 7.5% | 7.8% |
| Estates and Ancillary | 199 | 64.0 | 2.1% | 0.9% |
| Apprentice | 60 | 51.5 | 0.6% | 0.7% |
| Telephonist | 37 | 27.1 | 0.4% | 0.4% |
| Management Partner | 28 | 23.9 | 0.3% | 0.3% |
4.3 Demographics
Labour market outcomes may depend on the age and sex of the workforce. For example, outflows from the workforce and mean WTE may be related to age and sex.
4.3.1 General Practitioners
There were more female GPs than male in every age group under 60 and the mean WTE was greater for males in every age group under 65. (Figure 12)
4.3.2 Nurses
As at March 31 2025, 26.2%% of Advanced Nurse Practitioners were over 55 (0.2239889% of the WTE). For other nurses this is 36.3%% (22.4%% of the WTE) (Figure 13).
4.4 Absences
Sickness absence can result in cancelled appointments and procedures and lead to increased spend on locums and temporary staff.
Absence rates are calculated as the number of sessions or hours lost to absence divided by the total number of contracted sessions or hours. This
\[ \frac{\text{Sessions Lost to Sickness}}{\text{Total Contracted Sessions over the year}} \]
where the total sessions is the number of contracted sessions for staff employed at 31 March multiplied by the number of weeks in the year (52.179), an estimate of the total contracted sessions worked over the year.
4.4.1 Data quality
The number of sessions and hours lost to absences has varied considerably over the last few years, particularly for non-sickness reasons (Maternity/Paternity, Parental and Special). Due to the way the data is recorded at an aggregate level, it is not possible to determine the reasons behind this rise, and whether it is due to changes in recording. There have been three different ways of asking this question over the past surveys, which may have lead to inconsistencies in reporting.
4.4.2 General practitioners
Sessions lost to sick leave have decreased by 1.2 percentage points (Table 16).
| LeaveType | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sick leave | 2.6% | 3.0% | 1.8% |
| Maternity and Paternity leave | 2.6% | 3.4% | 1.9% |
| Parental leave | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| Special leave | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
4.4.3 All Other staff
Total aggregated absent hours were also collected for other occupations.
Hours lost to sick leave decreased by 0.9 percentage points(Table 16).
| LeaveType | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sick leave | 2.9% | 3.1% | 2.2% |
| Maternity and Paternity leave | 0.8% | 1.2% | 0.8% |
| Parental leave | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Special leave | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
4.5 Vacancies
Vacancy rates help us to understand labour demand and supply in Primary Care.
In this report GP vacancy rate is defined as:
\[ \frac{\text{Vacant GP sessions}}{\text{Sessions of GPs in post + Vacant GP sessions}} \]
where
Vacant GP sessions in the year is the sum of the weekly sessions of all vacant GP posts at 31 March of each year
Sessions of GPs in post is the sum of the weekly sessions of all GPs in post on 31st March of each year
For nursing and other staff groups vacancy rates we have used WTE instead of sessions.
4.5.1 Data quality
The methodology for collecting vacancy data has changed slightly over the past few years, which may have led to the wide variation of rates seen.
NES will continue to work with users and suppliers of these GP workforce statistics to further develop the data collection and analysis. This is in line with the development of this publication towards Official Statistics status.
4.5.2 General Practitioners
The vacancy rate has decreased from 7.6% at 31 March 2024 to 3.8% at 31 March 2025.
| HealthBoard | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant GP sessions | Contracted GP sessions | Vacancy rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 17.0% | 63.8 | 1,964.5 | 3.1% |
| NHS Borders | 13.6% | 15.2 | 649.0 | 2.3% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 6.2% | 11.7 | 723.6 | 1.6% |
| NHS Fife | 11.5% | 35.4 | 1,763.5 | 2.0% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 4.2% | 12.2 | 1,485.5 | 0.8% |
| NHS Grampian | 21.4% | 93.0 | 2,887.7 | 3.1% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 8.0% | 102.4 | 5,975.8 | 1.7% |
| NHS Highland | 22.0% | 440.3 | 2,400.0 | 15.5% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 11.7% | 112.9 | 2,523.6 | 4.3% |
| NHS Lothian | 7.8% | 59.2 | 5,461.0 | 1.1% |
| NHS Orkney | 71.4% | 26.0 | 268.9 | 8.8% |
| NHS Shetland | 60.0% | 24.0 | 162.2 | 12.9% |
| NHS Tayside | 28.8% | 129.5 | 2,271.9 | 5.4% |
| NHS Western Isles | 33.3% | 25.7 | 194.7 | 11.7% |
| Scotland | 14.4% | 1141.3 | 28,731.9 | 3.8% |
1. Board and Scotland totals have been calculated separately, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
Designation group
Vacancy rates fell for all GP designations.
| Year | DesignationGroup | VacancyRate |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Performer | 4.8% |
| 2023 | Performer Retainee | 16.8% |
| 2023 | Performer Salaried | 25.8% |
| 2024 | Performer | 4.1% |
| 2024 | Performer Retainee | 17.4% |
| 2024 | Performer Salaried | 16.2% |
| 2025 | Performer | 3.4% |
| 2025 | Performer Retainee | 5.7% |
| 2025 | Performer Salaried | 4.8% |
Seeking to recruit
GP Practices were asked whether, for the vacancies they reported, they were actively seeking to recruit for the post.
Of the 1,141.3 vacant sessions, practices were actively seeking to recruit to 560.4 (49.1%) sessions.
Of the vacant sessions were practices were not seeking to recruit, practices were asked to provide a reason, from No funding available, No suitable candidate, or Other. The most common reason given was Other with 70.0%, followed by No funding available with 19.5%
| Year | DesignationGroup | WTE | Vacant GP WTE | VacancyRate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Performer | 2,623.9 | 132.3 | 4.8% |
| 2023 | Performer Retainee | 26.3 | 5.3 | 16.8% |
| 2023 | Performer Salaried | 828.1 | 287.3 | 25.8% |
| 2024 | Performer | 2,553.5 | 109.5 | 4.1% |
| 2024 | Performer Retainee | 24.9 | 5.2 | 17.4% |
| 2024 | Performer Salaried | 874.8 | 169.5 | 16.2% |
| 2025 | Performer | 2,532.5 | 89.3 | 3.4% |
| 2025 | Performer Retainee | 29.6 | 1.8 | 5.7% |
| 2025 | Performer Salaried | 1,029.3 | 51.6 | 4.8% |
4.5.3 Nurses
There were an estimated 1,868.7 vacant hours on the 31 March 2025, with a national vacancy rate of 2.8% (Table 21). This is a large fall from last year in the vacancy rate in 2024, 4.1%. This reduction was seen in all NHS Boards.
| HealthBoard | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant hours | Contracted hours | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 15.1% | 199.7 | 4,646.8 | 4.1% |
| NHS Borders | 1,763.6 | |||
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 2,364.2 | |||
| NHS Fife | 5.8% | 88.6 | 4,650.6 | 1.9% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 10.4% | 78.2 | 3,331.6 | 2.3% |
| NHS Grampian | 12.9% | 164.6 | 8,978.5 | 1.8% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 7.1% | 383.7 | 10,685.6 | 3.5% |
| NHS Highland | 7.7% | 150.2 | 4,939.5 | 3.0% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 9.6% | 380.5 | 7,325.0 | 4.9% |
| NHS Lothian | 6.1% | 86.3 | 8,017.7 | 1.1% |
| NHS Orkney | 28.6% | 107.3 | 810.5 | 11.7% |
| NHS Shetland | 1,042.0 | |||
| NHS Tayside | 13.6% | 196.1 | 5,024.1 | 3.8% |
| NHS Western Isles | 640.0 | |||
| Scotland | 8.8% | 1,868.7 | 64,705.5 | 2.8% |
1. Board and Scotland totals have been calculated separately, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
Designation
Vacancy rates have fallen for most designations, with the three largest groups of Nurses; General Practice Nurse, Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Treatment Room Nurse which make up around 85% of the Nursing workforce, all seeing large falls in vacancy rates.
The vacancy rate for Consultant Nurses is very high, but this is due to the small number of WTE in this group.
| Year | OtherStaffDesignation | WTE | VacantWTE | VacancyRate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Advanced Nurse Practitioner | 622.8 | 15.0 | 2.4% |
| 2025 | Consultant Nurse | 6.1 | 2.6 | 30.2% |
| 2025 | General Practice Nurse | 987.0 | 24.2 | 2.4% |
| 2025 | Mental Health Nurse | 14.1 | 1.3 | 8.5% |
| 2025 | Other | 43.1 | 3.5 | 7.6% |
| 2025 | Treatment Room Nurse | 62.6 | 3.7 | 5.6% |
Seeking to recruit
For the nursing vacancies practices reported that they were actively seeking to recruit for 3,936.1 vacant hours, which was 53.5% of the total vacant hours.
4.5.4 Other Direct Clinical Care occupations
The vacancy rate has decreased for all occupations within the Other Direct Clinical Care group, with the exception of Physician associates. Although, the number of Physician associate vacancies remains very small.
| OtherStaffDesignation | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant hours | Contracted hours | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health Care Assistant | 0.8% | 124.3 | 9,484.1 | 1.3 |
| Pharmacist | 0.5% | 56.4 | 2,450.0 | 2.3 |
| Dispenser | 2,113.5 | |||
| Phlebotomist | 1,876.8 | |||
| Other Clinical Role | 944.6 | |||
| Paramedic | 0.1% | 48.7 | 894.0 | 5.2 |
| Physician Associate | 0.5% | 121.8 | 414.6 | 22.7 |
| Physiotherapist | 135.5 | |||
| Therapist (including Counsellor) | 116.6 |
4.6 Use of locum/sessional GP time
Locum GPs are doctors who provide cover for the absence of permanent staff due to maternity and paternity leave, sick leave, annual leave or vacancies.
The overall percentage of practices reporting locum use was 83%, very similar to the last two surveys (85%). The total number of WTE locums required was 279.0 and the total number of WTE locum requirements filled was 260.
There was a decrease of 111.1 WTE on the total locum WTE required, with the percentage filled WTE of GPs remaining steady between the 2024 and 2025 surveys. Not all boards reported a decrease (Table 24).
| HealthBoard | Practices using locums | WTE locums required | WTE locums filled | Percent Locum Filled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 73.0% | 11.8 | 11.0 | 93.0% |
| NHS Borders | 88.9% | 6.5 | 5.0 | 77.0% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 75.0% | 5.7 | 5.6 | 97.7% |
| NHS Fife | 82.5% | 22.9 | 21.2 | 92.3% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 69.7% | 11.2 | 10.3 | 91.5% |
| NHS Grampian | 89.1% | 20.2 | 18.2 | 90.2% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 84.2% | 67.1 | 64.2 | 95.7% |
| NHS Highland | 75.6% | 22.2 | 21.6 | 97.7% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 78.3% | 46.5 | 44.4 | 95.4% |
| NHS Lothian | 90.8% | 41.3 | 39.1 | 94.7% |
| NHS Orkney | 100.0% | 1.5 | 1.2 | 82.5% |
| NHS Shetland | 100.0% | 5.0 | 4.5 | 90.5% |
| NHS Tayside | 87.5% | 19.5 | 16.1 | 82.3% |
| NHS Western Isles | 100.0% | 2.7 | 2.7 | 98.0% |
| Scotland | 82.9% | 279.0 | 260.3 | 93.3% |
Most NHS Boards saw an increase in the percent of Locum sessions that were filled (Figure 22).
5 Appendices
5.1 Other information about the General Practice workforce
Public Health Scotland (PHS) also publish information on contact details for GP Practices, GPs and List sizes.
NES publish bi-annual data on the headcount of GPs within the NHS Scotland Workforce statistics. This uses the census dates of 31 March and 30 September each year, and also contains information on the number of GP Trainees, which are excluded from this report. Numbers of GPs vary seasonally, with numbers typically higher in September than March.
NES also produces the results of the OOH Primary Care survey. GPs working in Primary Care may work across the two services.
5.2 Official statistics information
As a provider, we adhere to the Code of Practice for Statistics and are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation. You can find more information on the Code of Practice, our protocols for Early and Pre-release Access to our publications, reports on events impacting our publications, our publication timetable.
5.2.1 Pre-release access to official statistics
Under terms of the “Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008”, NES is obliged to publish information on those receiving Pre-Release Access (“Pre-Release Access” refers to statistics in their final form prior to publication). The standard maximum Pre-Release Access is five working days.
Named individuals in the following organisations are approved to receive standard Pre-Release Access:
- Scottish Government Primary Care Directorate
- NHS Board Chief Executives
- NHS Board Communication leads