- Figures reveal 10.2 per cent of full-time GP positions across UK are vacant
- Only 61 per cent of vacancies can even be temporarily filled by locum staff
- Ever-growing numbers of GPs are also choosing to take early retirement
- In total 5,114 GPs have retired in England alone in the past three years
There is a picture-postcard quality to Frinton-on-Sea, with its golden sands, Victorian-style beach huts and famous esplanade, where crowds of day-trippers spend the summer months laying out picnic blankets and licking ice creams. The genteel Essex town (population 5,500) has a station, six schools, seven churches, 27 restaurants and cafes and, to the delight of many residents of its comfortable retirement chalets, the UK’s 11th best golf club. Yet something has recently been missing — something very important. Because for most of the past year, Frinton has not had a single full-time GP.
There are more than 8,000 men, women and children registered at the Caradoc Surgery, the only NHS facility in town. Yet when the Daily Mail visited last month, there were no qualified doctors on its staff. That is because the last permanent family doctor still practising in Frinton took early retirement last year. Patients were left in the hands of a rolling cast of locums — or temporary GPs — shipped in to work on a shift basis. They therefore found it almost impossible to see the same doctor more than once.
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