What to expect from your GP: new NHS GP charter published
Over the summer, NHS England (NHSE) published the new and mandatory GP patient charter. The charter is called 'You and Your General Practice' and outlines what you should expect from your GP practice.
GP practices must also promote the charter to their patients.
What is 'You and Your General Practice'?
This is a new charter introduced as part of the GP contract for 2025-26. The Government said the new charter would ‘improve transparency for patients’ on what patients can expect from surgeries in relation to appointment booking and customer service generally.
What does the charter say?
The charter explains:
- When and how you can contact your GP surgery.
- How your GP surgery should deal with your appointment requests.
- Patients might be offered appointments with professionals other than GPs.
- Registration rules – including not needing to give an address or show ID.
- How people should be treated by staff.
- How patients can raise concerns or give feedback directly to the practice, or with others, including a link to the local Healthwatch finder on the Healthwatch England website.
- Expectations of patients, including what to do if you need to cancel an appointment.
Key points for patients
You must must be able to contact your practice by phone, online or by walking in, and these three options must equally available for patients.
From 1 October 2025, GP practices will need to keep their online consultation form open for the duration of core hours for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests - so no shutting down the online appointment/query online form by 11am.
By 1 October 2025, practices will be also have to make sure that:
- Patients have read-only access to their care records.
- Community pharmacists can send consultation summaries into the GP practice workflow – which will reduce administrative burden for GP teams.
