General practice walk-in centres
Month ending 30 June 2026

About this release

This monthly release from Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents statistics relating to the number of monthly cases at pilot NHS walk-in centres opened as part of the Scottish Government's investment into General Practice.

The Scottish Government has made a commitment to open a network of GP walk-in centres to improve access to urgent primary care and reduce pressure on traditional GP practices and hospitals. These centres allow patients to see a GP and/or Advanced Nurse Practitioner on the same day without needing an appointment, focusing on urgent, on-the-day medical needs. The start dates for these sites have been phased, and some centres have been open longer than others. Centres have different opening hours and patient criteria, so direct comparisons of activity levels between centres should not be made. Information on opening hours and eligibility for each centre can be found here.

At the end of June, nine centres had opened, of which six had been operational for the full month of June: NHS Western Isles (Benbecula), NHS Tayside (Lochee), NHS Borders (Hawick), NHS Shetland (Lerwick), NHS Lothian (Wester Hailes), and NHS Dumfries & Galloway (Stranraer).

Data from these centres are being collected via existing GP practice systems. Please note that all data remains provisional and is subject to ongoing quality assurance checks with data providers.  

Main points

A case is used to identify a patient’s single encounter (service contact) with the walk-in centre service.

• For the six walk-in centres that had been open for the full month of June, 2,156 cases were reported.
• A total of 6,792 cases were reported across all walk-in centres between the opening of the first centre on 10 February 2026 and the end of June 2026.

Background

As part of the Scottish Government's investment in General Practice, and in line with  the First 100 Days commitment, a further five additional walk-in centres will open, and the process to identify more sites, to a total of 30, is currently underway.

Future publications will retrospectively incorporate statistics from these centres as the data becomes available to PHS.

National evaluation work on this pilot will be undertaken by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), focused on questions relating to effectiveness, appropriateness and cost of the walk-in services.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 25 August 2026.