Online GP requests reshape daily access across London for patients
From 1 October 2025, patients at London GP surgeries have been able to request appointments online throughout core hours rather than relying on early-morning phone calls or queuing at receptions, after changes to the England-wide GP contract and a Department of Health announcement brought mandatory all-day online request systems into routine use.
In the space of just over two years, practices have moved from varied uptake of digital tools to a position where online consultation platforms must be kept open between 8am and 6.30pm for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and administrative questions, while NHS England figures show general practice teams delivered 383.3 million appointments across England in the 12 months to June 2025, up from 375.7 million in the previous year.
National appointment data published in August 2025 indicate that 33.3% of GP appointments in June 2025 were carried out remotely, almost reaching early-pandemic levels, with around 8% delivered via online tools such as video, live chat or non-video apps, up from 4.9% in June 2024 and 1.5% in June 2023, a pattern reflected in London surgeries that now handle a larger share of contacts without bringing patients into the waiting room.
Regulator analysis in the Care Quality Commission’s State of Care 2024–25 report suggests that 51% of people in England in 2025 found it easy to contact their GP practice through the practice website, compared with 48% in 2024, while 49% reported that using the NHS App to get in touch was easy, up from 45% a year earlier, indicating gradual improvement that still leaves over a third of patients describing both routes as difficult.
For many Londoners, especially those juggling shift work or multiple jobs, the ability to submit written requests online at any point in the day aligns with these national trends and cuts the need to travel or hold on busy phone lines, but it also assumes access to reliable devices, data and confidence with forms, which can be unevenly spread across the capital’s neighbourhoods.
Royal College of General Practitioners statistics compiled in October 2025 highlight that practices serving areas with the highest income deprivation in England look after an average of 300 more patients per fully qualified GP than those in the least deprived areas, a gap that has widened since 2018, and London includes many such communities, meaning that mandatory online access can both streamline demand and expose underlying workforce and capacity differences between districts.
Day to day, the new systems leave London surgeries balancing rising digital submissions, high overall appointment volumes and long-standing workforce pressures, with the real measure of success likely to be whether residents in crowded and less affluent parts of the city find it genuinely easier to secure timely GP support without resorting to repeated calls, unplanned walk-ins or giving up on care altogether.
