General practice walk-in centres
Month ending 31 July 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 July, ten centres had opened, of which nine had been operational for the full month of July: NHS Borders (Hawick), NHS Dumfries & Galloway (Stranraer), NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (Cardonald, Glasgow), NHS Grampian (Aberdeen city), NHS Highland (Dunoon), NHS Lothian (Wester Hailes), NHS Tayside (Lochee), NHS Shetland (Lerwick) and NHS Western Isles (Benbecula).

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.  

After discussion with local partners, PHS has identified differences in GP IT system configurations across NHS board walk-in centres, which have led to variation in how consultations are recorded. To ensure clarity and reliability, figures are presented for cases only.

Main points

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

• For the nine walk-in centres that had been open for the full month of July, 3,732 cases were reported.
• A total of 10,524 cases were reported across all walk-in centres between the opening of the first centre on 10 February 2026 and the end of July 2026.

Background

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

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 29 September 2026.