2026 GP Patient Survey results released

The latest GP Patient Survey (GPPS) results have now been published, and they show another positive shift in experience over the last year, building on improvements since 2024. 

The survey asks about local GP practice services, the last contact with the practice, the quality of care at the last appointment, overall experience of the GP practice, experience when the GP practice is closed, pharmacy services and NHS dentistry, as well as current health status. 

The infographic (below) and national report (downloadable from the GPPS website) outline the headline findings.

What do the findings tell us? 

The 2026 survey shows that reported overall experience of primary care services has improved significantly year on year since 2024.

The majority of patients reported a good overall experience of the following services: 

• 76.7% of their GP practice overall (up +2.8 percentage points from 2024).
• 72.6% of contacting their GP practice the last time they tried (up +5.3 percentage points from 2024).
• 59.1% of NHS services when their practice was closed (up +3.2 percentage points from 2024).
• 88.9% of pharmacy services (up +2.1 percentage points from 2024).
• 73.5% of NHS dental services (up +4.3 percentage points from 2024).

Reported experience of contacting GP practices has continued to improve across all modes: 

• 56.9% said it was easy to contact their GP practice on the phone, compared with 52.9% in 2025 and 49.7% in 2024 (+7.2 percentage points over the last two years).
• A similar proportion (57.6%) also said it was easy to contact their GP practice using their practice website, compared with 51.2% in 2025 and 47.9% in 2024 (+9.7 percentage points over the last two years).
• More than half (54.3%) said it was easy to contact their GP practice using the NHS App, compared with 49.0% in 2025 and 44.8% in 2024 (+9.5 percentage points over the last two years).

Experience of last contact with the GP practice has improved and more people are using online modes of contact:

• Just under three quarters (72.6%) said their overall experience of contacting their GP practice the last time they tried was good, compared with 69.6% in 2025 and 67.3% in 2024 (up +5.3 percentage points over the last two years).
• Since 2024, the proportion of patients who last tried to contact their GP practice online has increased each year (now 30.8% up from 22.4% in 2025 and 16.8% in 2024).
• Experience of last contact varied by mode:
  • Patients who used the NHS App were most likely to say they had a good overall experience (75.7%).
  • Patients who last contacted their practice via a different website or app (67.5%) reported the least positive overall experience.
• Compared with the last two years, while the overall pattern of experience the last time patients contacted their practice was similar by mode, the largest increases from 2024 were for those who phoned (+5.7 percentage points) or used the NHS App (+4.2 percentage points).

Experience during the last appointment remains consistently high compared with the last two years: 

• 92.7% said they had confidence and trust in the healthcare professional they saw or spoke to, compared with 92.5% in 2025 and 92.3% in 2024.
• 90.2% said thinking about the reason for their last appointment, their needs were met. This is similar to 2025 and 2024 (both 89.9%).
• 86.0% said the healthcare professional was good at treating them with care and concern, compared with 85.6% in 2025 and 85.3% in 2024.
• There has also been a positive shift in the choices patients were offered and how they felt about the length of wait for an appointment:
  • 56.9% were offered a choice of time or day, compared with 54.2% in 2025 and 52.8% in 2024 (+4.1 percentage point increase over the two years).
  • 15.9% were offered a choice of location, compared with 14.3% in 2025 and 12.9% in 2024 (+3.0 percentage point increase over the two years).
  • 69.3% said the length of time they waited for their appointment was about right, compared with 67.2% in 2025 and 65.9% in 2024 (+3.4 percentage point increase over two years).

Where can I find more information? 

For reports showing the national results broken down by NHS Region, ICS, PCN and practice, go to https://www.gp-patient.co.uk/surveysandreports - you can also see previous years’ results here. Trend data is available from 2024 onwards. 

ICS slidepacks bring together ICS data for key questions in one report, including PCN comparisons and benchmarking against national level data. They also include examples of the types of demographic breakdowns which are available for all questions in the analysis tool, providing insight into health inequalities.

For PCN results, an interactive dashboard is also available on the website. This presents the results for all questions for individual PCNs, including variation by practice within each PCN.

To analyse the survey data by participant demographics, the GPPS analysis tool is available. You can use this tool to view the 2026 results for each question with the option to filter for specific groups of patients by age, ethnicity, and more. It will also allow you to run bespoke crosstabulations of the data and view trends with from 2024 onwards. Any analysis you run will be available to download in PowerPoint and Excel formats. 

Technical information:

The survey received 654,714 responses from patients aged 16 years or over who are registered with a GP practice in England. This includes 566,443 questionnaires completed online. The survey has a national response rate of 22.1%.

Comparisons can be made with the 2025 and 2024 surveys. The 2024 survey was the start of a new time series due to methodological and questionnaire changes. Further  information is available in the Technical annex.

Please note that fieldwork for the survey (the period in which surveys are sent and returned) is undertaken from approximately January to March in each respective year. The 2026 survey took place between 2 January 2026 to 13 April 2026.

For more information, please contact the GP Patient Survey team at [email protected].

Note on statistically significant differences for GPPS

The GP Patient Survey results are estimates based on a random sample, and, as a result, they contain some uncertainty. We use confidence intervals to describe the accuracy of findings, demonstrating that if we were to re-run the survey, we would get a result that falls within the confidence interval 95% of the time. Confidence intervals also allow us to compare results over time: for GPPS at national level this interval is very narrow, and usually means that even small differences (of less than +0.25 percentage points) are statistically significant.

Note on ranking practices

The GP Patient Survey is not designed to rank GP practices as there is no single metric on which to evaluate GP practice performance. The survey highlights areas in which practices perform best and areas in which they could improve compared with the local and national average.