The GP employment debate is usually conducted nationally, but nobody works nationally; they work somewhere, and the somewhere is most of the story. Vacancy availability varies enormously by region, setting and role type, in patterns that are stable enough to plan around. This page is the first edition of what will become a quarterly review of the public vacancy picture; it sets out how to read the market, what the openly available data can and cannot tell you, and the geography that consistently emerges.
What the public data can show
The observable layer is advertised vacancies: NHS Jobs listings for salaried, fixed-term and out-of-hours roles, BMJ Careers for salaried and partnership advertisements, and platform-visible locum session volume. Read over time and by region, these show relative demand: which regions carry persistently more salaried adverts per head, where partnership vacancies recur (often a marker of recruitment difficulty rather than opportunity abundance), where OOH and urgent-care providers are recruiting continuously, and how stated sessional rates compare where advertisements include them. What the public layer cannot show is equally important: the local market, LMC lists, direct approaches, word-of-mouth locum work, which in general practice is large; unadvertised absorption of GPs into ARRS and reimbursement-scheme posts; and applicant volume, which turns the same advert into an opportunity in one region and a hundred-applicant contest in another. Any regional analysis, ours included, describes the advertised market, and honest reporting says so.
The geography that keeps emerging
The recurring pattern across recruitment data and workforce analysis: advertised opportunity is relatively richer, and competition thinner, in the areas that have historically struggled to recruit, parts of the North East, coastal and rural England, post-industrial towns, much of the deprived-area map, while competition concentrates brutally where GPs most want to live, London and the wider South East above all, plus the popular cities. The BJGP-documented widening of patients-per-GP between practices is this geography in numbers: the under-doctored areas are getting more under-doctored, which is precisely where the unmet demand, and often the recruitment incentives, sit. The uncomfortable, factual core of the "just move" argument is that the mismatch is partly spatial; the equally factual rejoinder is that lives, families and partners' careers are not infinitely portable, which is why regional mismatch behaves as a genuine constraint rather than a personal failing.
Role type changes the map
Salaried advertising follows practice finances, and the 2026/27 practice-level reimbursement scheme (£4.57 per adjusted patient, claimable for new salaried GPs or sessions) should, if it works as intended, show up first as salaried adverts and quiet direct hires in ordinary practices; watch that layer over the coming quarters. Partnership vacancies cluster where succession is hardest, frequently excellent opportunities economically, in exactly the places fewer applicants consider. Locum availability remains the most volatile layer, thinner everywhere than five years ago, healthiest around OOH, urgent care and the areas with substantive recruitment gaps. Fixed-term and maternity-cover roles are the quiet on-ramp many newly qualified GPs actually use, and they surface disproportionately on NHS Jobs rather than the prestige boards.
Using this as a jobseeker
Practically: set NHS Jobs and BMJ Careers alerts for your feasible radius, then deliberately test a wider one, because the gradient between "nothing within ten miles" and "shortlisted within thirty" is often the whole game; watch OOH and urgent-care providers as a parallel market; and work the invisible layer hardest where the visible one is thin, LMC, networks, direct approaches, per the full playbook at /blog/newly-qualified-gp-cant-find-job-practical-guide. Read recurring adverts as information: a post readvertised three times is telling you about the role, the rate or the place, and sometimes that information is an opening to negotiate.
What the quarterly editions will add
From the next edition, this page will report the advertised-market picture by region and role type at a fixed methodology, counts by nation and English region, salaried versus partnership versus fixed-term versus OOH, and stated rates where published, so that changes, including any employment effect of the 2026/27 funding, become visible rather than anecdotal. The methodology will be published alongside, and its limits, advertised market only, restated every quarter, because the honest version of this analysis is the only one worth doing.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really easier to find GP work in under-doctored areas?
The advertised data and recruitment-difficulty history both say yes, often substantially, with the personal costs of relocation being the real constraint. Some roles in these areas also carry incentives worth checking.
Do the new funding schemes mean more jobs are coming?
They fund the employment mechanism directly, which is the right point of intervention; early workforce data shows salaried FTE rising. Whether it reaches advertised vacancies, and sessional GPs specifically, is exactly what the quarterly tracking is for.