Any GP practice managers?

[MinniMouse]

There's also a national shortage of GP's, some surgeries just can't cope with the volume of patients. There was threat of one closing in a local town as a couple of GP's retired and they couldn't fill the position. The other practices in the town and the one I work in are helping out and sending their GP's in to help cover the area and keep the health centre open.

It also doesn't help where you have good health centres people are reluctant to leave and will resort to all sorts to stay on the list, so the list only gets longer. Parents who say their grown children still live with them, and their kids to claiming they still live at that address even though someone else has moved in, teenagers living at university and home at the weekends (when the health centre isn't open), etc.

[mickchick]

Mrs Grumpy - NHS England are telling it like it is. There has been no policy change since the outbreak of coronavirus because the requirement to keep catchment areas under constant review has always been policy. All that has happened is that GP surgeries are being reminded by their paymasters, the health trusts, to cull their lists in order to cope with the pressure of the virus and the need to provide a full service for those patients within their catchment - something they are committed to do anyway. So it should be ongoing, but it tends to happen only when surgeries come under extreme financial pressure, as they are now. I am sorry to suggest that you may be looking for loopholes where none exist. Hopefully you might stand more chance of keeping the doctor you are happy with by persuading the senior partner to change his stance, rather than looking for a flaw in the small print. Because, believe me, any surgery has total discretion over who is on their list, and even patients who live well within a catchment area can be removed and the surgery is not required even to give a reason.
Fingers crossed for you that your surgery has a change of heart, though.

[MrsGrumpy]

Mickchick just going by what the GP told us, ie that the NHS had changed the policy 😕