New Appointment System
The information on the page below is to outline the challenges in the appointment system coming into effect from the 1st October 2025. These changes have been made due to a mandate from NHS England and the Department of Health.
Urgent Appointments
Urgent, same-day GP appointments and all treatment room appointments will continue to be booked by telephone, in the usual way.
Routine Appointments
For all routine appointments, an online consultation request will need to be completed. The link for this is below and can be found on our homepage. Once an online consultation has been submitted, it will be reviewed by one of our health navigators and if required a GP.
If your matter is routine and you are able to submit a consultation request online, we ask that you please do not call or attend the practice to book an appointment. This is to ensure the system is as equitable as possible for all patients.
If you are having difficulties completing a consultation online, you can call us and our reception team will support you with this.
After this, there are a number of different outcomes that are possible. You may be sent a booking link via the NHS app or by text message. This will allow you to book a specific appointment with a clinician. This could be a face-to-face or telephone appointment and may be with a GP, pharmacist, physiotherapist or other suitable clinician. Where appropriate your problem may be resolved by text message or phone call with the triaging GP.
If no appointment is immediately available via the booking link please check back using the link the following day at 10am when more appointments will be released.
Depending on your problem a message may also come through to you advising a more appropriate means of accessing healthcare. This may include visiting a community pharmacy, calling 111, or attending a walk-in centre. If you have any problems completing an online consultation, you can call reception and our team will complete this for you over the phone. It is not possible for our reception team to book a routine appointment for you without an online consultation being completed and processed first.
We appreciate this change may be unsettling for some who are used to booking an appointment in a more traditional way. But we believe by making these changes, we can accommodate the mandate from NHS England and the Department of Health and continue to deliver high quality healthcare to all our patients.
As this is a new system, it may be necessary on occasion to restrict access to routine appointments to ensure we continue to provide safe patient care. If the E-consult link is unavailable please try again the following day.
Easy Read Version
An easy to read version of this information is available here.
Published: Sep 22, 2025
CONTACT DETAILS
The Family Practice
Western College
Cotham
Bristol
BS6 6DF
Reception: 0117 946 6455
Fax: 0117 974 3112
Out Of Hours:111
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