East Cliff Practice appointment system – Anima with GP triage since April 2025

From the 1st of October 2025, the General Practice contract was changed by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). We are now required to keep our online system open from 8am to 6.30pm for non-urgent requests, meaning an increase in the number of requests received each day. These changes have been put in place with no extra funding or resources to cope with the extra demand.

We currently receive up to 190 requests for GP appointments each day.

Every appointment request is looked at by a GP to decide the best course of action, which may be a prescription, a call for advice, a referral to another service, or an appointment. Reception then call the patient to advise of the Doctor’s decision. There is a limit to how many requests we can safely look at and respond to in a working day. This might vary on days when we have staff sickness or training, or if IT systems fail.

The increase in requests since this change has caused an increase in waiting times for the next available routine appointment with a GP. This was previously at around 2 weeks. We are currently looking at increased waiting times of 4-5 weeks for most GPs as bookings increase.

We continue to hold a few appointments to try to manage more urgent issues, however these are also becoming booked up more quickly.

You can send an Anima request from 8am each morning, but once our capacity is reached, we can only accept routine requests. Due to the increase in total numbers it can take up to three days to respond to routine requests.

Please do not request a routine appointment for any problem that needs to be seen within the next 3 days, or if you think you need antibiotics for an infection. It is no longer possible for us to respond to all medical requests on the same working day.

If you have an urgent problem that cannot wait, OR if your symptoms are worsening or change whilst waiting for your appointment, you can use 111, Urgent Treatment Centres, A&E, or call reception for advice. The ‘WAITLESS’ app can be used to check current waiting and travel times to the local Urgent Treatment Centres. This also shows how many patients are currently waiting to be seen at each site.

EXPECTED CURRENT WAITING TIMES

Please be aware that these waiting times can be subject to change depending on annual leave, sick leave and staffing issues, as well as periods of increased demand. We are working hard to try to respond to all patient queries in a timely manner.

Appointments will be allocated following triage by a Doctor who will decide urgency based on the information provided by the patient.

Private letters, forms and reports are not part of NHS work and will incur a fee.

• Urgent appointment                              0-3 days
• Routine appointment                            3-5 weeks
• Prescriptions                                        5-7 working days
• Extension to fit notes for work              5-7 working days
• Private Letters and medical reports     8-12 weeks
• Private medical examination                5-6 weeks

Published: Nov 14, 2025