GP practice hosts parkrun link for local London patients

Since October 2024, West Hampstead Medical Centre in north-west London has been listed as a “parkrun practice”, tying its day-to-day GP work to weekly 5k community events at nearby Gladstone Park and Hampstead Heath so that routine consultations and social prescribing now point patients towards a regular, free activity close to home.

The surgery’s website confirms that it now formally partners with two local Saturday-morning parkruns, both starting at 9am, offering patients and staff the option to walk, jog, run, volunteer or simply attend, with the practice framing this as part of how it “provides NHS services” to its catchment by linking clinic care to nearby green-space routes published in October 2024.

Nationally, parkrun UK’s six-year review of the GP partnership scheme reported in June 2024 that more than 1,900 practices are signed up to the parkrun practice initiative, representing around 20% of all GP surgeries across the UK and signalling that West Hampstead is now part of a wider shift to embed community-based physical activity into everyday primary care.

Figures compiled for the Royal College of General Practitioners’ parkrun hub describe parkrun as a charity with over 125,000 people taking part in UK events each week across more than 1,000 locations, giving London practices a ready-made network of timed but pressure-free 5k and 2k routes that are delivered by volunteers rather than clinical staff.

A separate analysis published in March 2025 by running outlet runABC estimated that more than 225,000 people now take part in over 1,200 parkrun events across the UK every weekend, with almost 2,000 GP practices socially prescribing parkrun and around 45,000 of last year’s new registrants describing themselves as previously “completely inactive”, underlining how the model is being used for patients who face the greatest barriers to exercise.

RCGP commentary on the initiative from May 2024 highlights that the college’s lifestyle and physical-activity lead now works with parkrun to focus specifically on patients and communities with the biggest obstacles to participation, meaning practices such as West Hampstead are being encouraged to see Saturday-morning park events as a routine extension of everyday care rather than an optional extra for already-active runners.

20 November 2025 11:50 By London Health News Desk