Nearly 350,000 patients have been stripped from GP practices across England in an ‘aggressive’ list-cleaning drive – wiping around £45m from practice funding and forcing staff to spend hours re-registering patients removed inappropriately, GPonline has revealed…

We have noticed a fall in the number of patients registered with an Essex practice recently as figures from January to April 2026 show a reduction of just over 2,200 patients.

The exercise in England has been undertaken by Primary Care Support England (PCSE) on behalf of NHS England. The current programme is part of an ongoing effort to reduce patient list inflation and ensure that:

• GP practices are paid for the patients they are genuinely responsible for.
• Patients remain registered for appropriate screening, vaccination and other NHS services.
• NHS demographic records remain accurate.

PCSE carries out checks on groups that are statistically more likely to contain inaccurate registrations, including:

• Patients aged over 100
• Students registered at an educational address for four or more years
• People who moved to England 12 months earlier (transient registrations)
• Properties reported by Royal Mail as demolished
• Properties with unusually high numbers of registered occupants
• Children recorded as the sole occupier of a property.

Practices may be asked to validate records or PCSE may write directly to patients asking them to confirm or update their address. If a patient cannot be confirmed, an FP69 marker may be applied, which can eventually lead to removal from the practice list unless updated information is received.