About this release

This new quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information on the number of GP practices in Scotland and the number of patients registered at these practices. It includes statistics on practice list sizes by age, sex, deprivation and urban-rural classification, as well as quarterly and annual trends.

The new publication replaces the previous quarterly General Practice demographics release and the annual GP practice list sizes release, bringing together all available information on GP practice list sizes. This release provides information as at 1 October 2025, with annual data updated as at 1 April 2025. We would welcome feedback on this new release and please send comments to phs.generalpractice@phs.scot.

Main points

As at 1 October 2025:

• There were 6,052,826 people registered with a GP practice in Scotland.
• The number of patients aged 65 and over has increased by 2.3% in the last year, to 1,186,099 from 1,159,295 in October 2024.

As at 1 April 2025:

• The number of patients registered with a GP practice continues to rise year on year and has increased by 4.9% since April 2019 (5,752,050 in 2019 compared with 6,035,952 in 2025).
• The number of GP practices in Scotland has decreased by 8.5% from 969 GP practices in April 2016 to 887 GP practices in April 2025, reflecting a trend towards fewer, larger practices overall.

A population pyramid plotting registered patients with a general practice per sex and five-year age group from 0-85+, in 2019 compared to 2025. X-axis shows patient count from 0-250,000, and the y-axis shows age groups from 00-04 to 85+. Males are plotted on the right hand side with data from 2025 represented by thick dark purple bars, and data from 2019 are represented by light purple thin bars, overlaid on the thick dark purple bars. Female data are plotted on the left hand side with data from 2025 represented by thick magenta coloured bars, and data from 2019 are represented by pink purple thin bars, overlaid on the thicker magenta bars.

Close

Patients registered with a general practice by age group and sex; April 2019 compared with April 2025

This population pyramid shows how the demographics of registered patients at GP practices have changed over the last six years. Male patients are plotted to the right, and female patients are plotted to the left, with darker and lighter bars to represent the two different time points. The plot demonstrates that patient numbers are increasing over time, including in the older age groups.

Background

The new publication replaces the previous quarterly General Practice demographics release and the annual GP practice list sizes release, bringing together all available information on practice list sizes.

The accompanying data visualisation provides quarterly and annual trends available at Scotland, NHS Board, Health and Social Care Partnership, GP Cluster and practice level, by age group and sex. Practice list sizes for the latest quarter are also available by deprivation and urban-rural classification. These are based on an individual's area of residence, and are measured using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification. Data downloads are also available as part of the dashboard.

Information on the number of patients registered with a GP practice is sourced from the Community Health Index (CHI) Database. Practice details are sourced from the National Primary Care Clinicians Database (NPCCD) which is maintained by NHS Boards.

Further information can be found on the General Practice in Scotland section of our website.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be February 2026.