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Blackburn with Darwen · North West

St Georges Surgery

St Georges Surgery has a Practice Grade of 75.5 out of 100, based on 107 answers in the 2026 GP Patient Survey and NHS appointment data. That is 1.7 below the England average (77.2) and place 14 of 18 graded practices in Blackburn with Darwen. 65% of appointments took place within two weeks of booking (August 2026).

Updated with the 2026 GP Patient Survey · Appointments: August 2026

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Practice Grade

75.5/ 100

1.7 below the England average (77.2)

Based on 107 answers of 511 asked (21%)

Patients: cannot be told apart from the England average

The margin of error for patients’ answers reaches the England average, so the difference may come down to who happened to answer. How to read the margin of error.

Where St Georges Surgery sits among all practices in England

Combined from patient experience (75.4, from the GP Patient Survey) and access (75.4, from NHS appointment and phone data). How we grade.

Why this grade?

Two parts, each compared with England; the share says how much each part counts:

  • Patient experience75.4 · weighs 70%
  • Access75.4 · weighs 30%

Practice Grade: 75.5

Flu vaccination in Blackburn with Darwen, winter 2025 to 2026

65.3% of patients aged 65 and over registered with GP practices in Blackburn with Darwen had a flu vaccine between 1 September 2025 and 28 February 2026 (18,155 of 27,800). England: 74.5%.

WhoBlackburn with DarwenEngland
Aged 65 and over18,155 of 27,80065.3%74.5%
Under 65 in a clinical risk group10,186 of 33,31130.6%40.6%
Pregnant women630 of 2,87521.9%38.4%
Children aged 2500 of 2,07224.1%43.5%
Children aged 3578 of 2,22326.0%44.8%

The counts follow the GP practice, not where people live. They include vaccinations given in GP practices, pharmacies and other places that are recorded in the GP record. 99.3% of practices sent data. UKHSA says the number counted as pregnant may be too high, so uptake among pregnant women is probably understated.

This card shows flu only. We have not found local authority figures for last winter’s COVID-19 vaccination from UKHSA.

Source: UK Health Security Agency, Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in GP patients: winter season 2025 to 2026 (final data, published 28 May 2026). Open Government Licence v3.0.

What patients say

The share of patients who gave a positive answer, from the 2026 GP Patient Survey. The tick is England.

The wider the line around the dot, the less certain the figure, usually because fewer people answered. Read more about the method.

  • Overall experience107 answers

    England: 76.7%

  • Contacting the practice108 answers

    England: 72.6%

  • Being listened to105 answers

    England: 87.1%

  • Confidence and trust104 answers

    England: 92.7%

  • Needs met105 answers

    England: 90.2%

  • Wait for an appointment99 answers

    England: 69.3%

Patients' answers, question by question

Every question from the 2026 GP Patient Survey that we show. None of them except overall experience is part of the grade.

Contacting the practice

  • Contacting the practice: patients describing their experience of contacting the practice as good

    108 answers

  • Getting through on the phone: patients saying it is easy to contact the practice on the phone

    99 answers

  • Reception and admin team: patients saying the reception and administrative team is helpful

    103 answers

  • Knowing the next step: patients who knew what the next step would be after contacting the practice

    106 answers

Seeing the same person

  • Having a preferred professional: patients who have a healthcare professional they prefer to see or speak to

    107 answers

  • Seeing your preferred professional: patients with a preferred healthcare professional who see or speak to them always, almost always or a lot of the time

    30 answers

Your last appointment

  • Wait for an appointment: patients who felt the wait for their last appointment was about right

    99 answers

  • Being listened to: patients saying the healthcare professional was good at listening to them

    105 answers

  • Care and concern: patients saying the healthcare professional was good at treating them with care and concern

    104 answers

  • Confidence and trust: patients who had confidence and trust in the healthcare professional

    104 answers

  • Involvement in decisions: patients saying they were involved as much as they wanted in decisions about their care

    99 answers

  • Needs met: patients saying their needs were met at their last appointment

    105 answers

Appointments

Within two weeks of booking
64.6% (August 2026, 3,404 appointments)
Calls answered
86.1% (August 2026, 7,948 calls)
England
87.7% within two weeks, 68.6% of calls answered

Month by month

The appointment part of the Practice Grade, month by month over the past year: the share of appointments that took place within two weeks of booking. The scale runs from 0 to 100%. A month without a figure is left empty, and we never fill it in.

Appointments within two weeks of booking
Appointments within two weeks of booking, month by month from September 2025 to August 2026.
MonthShare
September 202562.6%
October 202562.8%
November 202568.7%
December 202564.2%
January 202668.2%
February 202663.7%
March 202665.3%
April 202659.3%
May 202661.7%
June 202661.5%
July 202665.8%
August 202664.6%

64.6% in August 2026 (3,404 appointments). The same month, England as a whole had 87.7%.

Source: Appointments in General Practice, NHS England. Not a separate grade: the grade uses the latest month, as shown with the grade.

Time from booking to appointment

Routine appointments

Booked in advance for a problem that is not urgent.

Within 7 days of booking
55.9%
Within 14 days of booking
60.7%
More than 28 days after booking
9.0%
Appointments counted
2,529

Urgent (acute) appointments

Recorded by the practice as needing attention on the same day.

Took place on the day it was booked
59.9%
Within 7 days of booking
70.1%
Appointments counted
776

These are the general consultations in August 2026, with any member of staff, by how many days passed between booking and the appointment. They are not how long a patient waited after first getting in touch: a routine appointment is often booked ahead on purpose, or on a date the patient chose. Planned clinics, triage calls, medication reviews and similar are left out, and so are appointments with no recorded booking date. The practice, not NHS England, decides whether an appointment is routine or acute.

NHS England publishes these figures as official statistics in development, and its own national figures use the same split: urgent appointments on the day of booking, and routine ones within 7 and 14 days. Practices record appointments in different ways, so we show no England figure beside these monthly figures. The grade uses a wider count, NHS England’s own measure of appointments within two weeks, shown with the grade above.

Source: NHS England, Appointments in General Practice, August 2026.

Do they look after you?

Do you see the same person?

Seeing your preferred professional: 41.7% (England 41.9%), 30 answers.

Can you get through?

Getting through on the phone: 66.2% (England 56.9%), 99 answers.

Calls answered by the practice: 86.1% (August 2026), from NHS phone data.

Are you listened to?

Being listened to: 89.1% (England 87.1%), 105 answers.

Needs met: 91.6% (England 90.2%), 105 answers.

Contact and location

Not part of the grade
Phone01254 584888

Location

St George's Surgery, 62 Haslingden Road, Blackburn, BB2 3HS
Show on a map

Primary care network: Blackburn East PCN. Find a GP on the NHS website

Source: NHS England Organisation Data Service, 20 October 2026.

Trend 2024–2026

2024–2026: better on overall experience.

From the GP Patient Survey. Ipsos redesigned the survey in 2024 and started a new series, so earlier years are not shown and not compared. The trend follows question 32, the share of patients who describe the practice as good (the survey part of the Practice Grade); years without a result are left blank. England as a whole: 73.9% in 2024, 75.4% in 2025 and 76.7% in 2026. Small ups and downs that could just as well reflect who happened to respond count as unchanged, not as a change.

  • Overall experience (question 32)

    Better 2024–2026 · 3 surveys

How we decide whether a practice has changed

Who answered

Questionnaires returned
109
Questionnaires sent
511
Response rate
21.3%

The survey is sent to a random sample of registered patients aged 16 and over. Some questions are answered by fewer people than others, which is why each question has its own number of answers.

Independent: no one can pay to change a result, a label or what is shown, and the site has no ties to GP practices, other care providers or public authorities. The grade uses open data only: the 2026 GP Patient Survey and NHS England’s appointment and phone data. Who runs the site.

Below are facts and context. None of it is part of the Practice Grade.

About the practice

Not part of the grade
CQC rating
Good (published 2019-09-09)
Registered patients
10,205 (1 October 2026)
Primary care network
Blackburn East PCN

Registered patients

How many patients were registered with the practice on 1 October each year, and how old they are.

Since October 2019
+1,209 (+13%) (8,996 then)
Aged 0 to 14
19 in 100 (England 16, Blackburn with Darwen 19)
Aged 15 to 44
40 in 100 (England 41, Blackburn with Darwen 42)
Aged 45 to 64
25 in 100 (England 25, Blackburn with Darwen 24)
Aged 65 to 79
12 in 100 (England 13, Blackburn with Darwen 11)
Aged 80 or over
4 in 100 (England 5, Blackburn with Darwen 4)

A patient counts where they are registered, wherever they live. Lists grow when practices merge or new homes are built nearby, and get smaller when NHS England removes people who have moved away or died but were still on the list: NHS England says the fall of 105,684 patients in England in October 2026 came from that work. Blackburn with Darwen is the same count over every practice there. Source: NHS England, Patients Registered at a GP Practice, each October from 2019 to 2026.

Where patients live

Patients here live in some of England’s most deprived areas (decile 2 of 10).

Deprivation decile
2 of 10 (1 is the most deprived tenth of England’s neighbourhoods, 10 the least)
Deprivation index
35.7 (England 21.8; a higher figure is more deprived)

This describes the neighbourhoods where the practice’s registered patients live, not any one patient, and it says nothing about the care the practice gives. It is context and is not part of the grade. The figure is the IMD 2025 index of each neighbourhood, averaged over the practice’s patients, so a practice with patients from many neighbourhoods lands nearer the middle. It cannot be compared with the 2019 figures. Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, English Indices of Deprivation 2025, averaged for each practice by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (Fingertips).

Appointments

Appointments in August 2026
3,666
Booked for the same day
44.0%
Face to face
78.9%

All appointments in the practice’s appointment book that month, with any member of staff, whether the patient attended or not. “Same day” means the appointment took place on the day it was booked; it is not a waiting time, and NHS England says it cannot measure demand on its own. “Face to face” is how the practice recorded the appointment; the rest were by phone, video, online or home visit. Both shares leave out appointments where this was not recorded.

NHS England publishes these figures as official statistics in development. Practices record appointments in different ways, and some activity, such as some appointments run by the primary care network, is not included, so NHS England says the figures do not give a complete view of a practice’s work.

Source: NHS England, Appointments in General Practice, August 2026.

GPs, nurses and other staff

Full-time GPs per 1,000 patients
0.82 (England 0.63, Blackburn with Darwen 0.60)
Full-time nurses per 1,000 patients
0.20 (England 0.26, Blackburn with Darwen 0.23)
Other full-time clinical staff per 1,000 patients
0.24 (England 0.28, Blackburn with Darwen 0.17)
All GPs
8.4 full-time equivalent
Qualified permanent GPs
4.0 full-time equivalent
Registered patients per permanent GP
2,592

Full-time equivalent adds up the hours staff work, so two GPs working half the week count as one. The figures per 1,000 patients are our own calculation from the same NHS England file: the full-time equivalent divided by the registered patients, times 1,000. GPs include GPs in training and locums. Other clinical staff are those employed by the practice who see patients, such as pharmacists, healthcare assistants and physiotherapists; staff employed by the primary care network instead of the practice are not counted. Blackburn with Darwen and England are the same calculation over every practice there. Qualified permanent GPs leave out GPs in training and locums. Patients per permanent GP is our own calculation, not an NHS England figure: registered patients divided by the full-time equivalent of qualified permanent GPs. It does not count work done by locums, GPs in training, nurses, pharmacists or other staff.

Source: NHS England, General Practice Workforce, August 2026.

Friends and Family Test

Answers in June 2026
49
Answered “very good” or “good”
91.8%
Answered “poor” or “very poor”
6.1%

The test asks patients about their overall experience of the practice. NHS England says it is not meant for comparing practices: each practice chooses how to collect answers, anyone who uses the practice can answer (there is no random sample), and the results are not adjusted for differences between patients. So we show it as the practice’s own feedback, with no England figure beside it.

Source: NHS England, Friends and Family Test, GP practices, June 2026.

Diabetes, blood pressure, asthma and COPD

Not part of our grade

How many in 100 of the practice’s patients with each condition had the check or reached the level the guidelines aim for in 2025-26 (1 April to 31 March), from NHS England’s Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF). The figures describe how care is recorded and followed up, not how good the care is for any one patient, and they are not part of our grade.

Diabetes

Blood sugar (HbA1c) at 58 mmol/mol or lower
56 in 100 (580 patients, England 61, Blackburn with Darwen 56)
Blood pressure at 140/90 or lower
74 in 100 (544 patients, England 79, Blackburn with Darwen 76)
Feet checked in the last 12 months
76 in 100 (766 patients, England 79, Blackburn with Darwen 76)

High blood pressure

Blood pressure at 140/90 or lower, aged 79 or under
72 in 100 (1,258 patients, England 72, Blackburn with Darwen 69)
Blood pressure at 150/90 or lower, aged 80 or over
89 in 100 (245 patients, England 84, Blackburn with Darwen 84)

Asthma

Asthma review with a written action plan in the last 12 months
64 in 100 (741 patients, England 68, Blackburn with Darwen 64)

COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)

COPD review in the last 12 months
86 in 100 (229 patients, England 77, Blackburn with Darwen 78)

Patients are everyone on the practice’s register for the condition in the group the row names, including those the practice left out of its QOF target for personalised care reasons, such as someone who chose not to have the check. So a figure can be lower than the achievement the practice reports. With fewer than 10 patients in a group the row says the patients are too few instead. Blackburn with Darwen and England are the same calculation over every practice there. None of the figures is adjusted for how old or how unwell a practice’s patients are.

Source: NHS England, Quality and Outcomes Framework, 2025-26, indicators DM020, DM036, DM012, HYP008, HYP009, AST007 and COPD010. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Vaccinations and screening

Not part of our grade

How many of the practice’s patients in each group had childhood vaccinations or cervical screening, from NHS England’s Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) for 2025-26. These figures are not part of our grade. We show them as published and make no comparison between practices.

Childhood vaccinations

  • Babies at 8 months

    Babies who had at least 3 doses of a vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough before they were 8 months old.

    86.2% (94 of 109). England: 88.7%.

  • Children at 18 months

    Children who had at least 1 dose of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) between 12 and 18 months old.

    84.9% (101 of 119). England: 85.6%.

  • Children at 5 years

    Children who had the pre-school booster (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio) and at least 2 doses of MMR between the ages of 1 and 5.

    89.1% (123 of 138). England: 83.4%.

Cervical screening

  • Women aged 25 to 49

    Women eligible for cervical screening with an adequate test recorded in the last 3 years and 6 months.

    64.4% (1,120 of 1,738). England: 66.3%.

  • Women aged 50 to 64

    Women eligible for cervical screening with an adequate test recorded in the last 5 years and 6 months.

    74.7% (598 of 801). England: 75.4%.

The period is 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026: the children who reached the age in that year, and the women aged 25 to 64 at its end. Each figure is the number of patients with the vaccine or test recorded, out of everyone eligible. Eligible includes patients the practice has left out of the QOF target for personalised care reasons, for example someone who chose not to have it after talking it through, or who did not reply to invitations, so the percentage can be lower than the QOF achievement figure the practice reports. England is the same calculation over every practice.

The numbers are what the practice has on record. A vaccine or test given elsewhere only counts once it reaches that record. Every eligible patient is counted, so there is no survey margin of error, but when only a few patients are eligible one patient more or less moves the percentage a lot.

Source: NHS England, Quality and Outcomes Framework, 2025-26, indicators VI001 to VI003, CS005 and CS006.

Antibiotic prescribing

Not part of our grade

How much this practice prescribes antibiotics, and which ones, from NHS Business Services Authority prescribing data. Public health bodies aim to cut unnecessary antibiotic use because it helps bacteria become resistant to the drugs, but a figure cannot tell you whether any one prescription was needed. These figures are not part of our grade.

How much

Antibiotic items per STAR-PU
0.89 (4,962 items, April 2025 to March 2026, England 0.74, Blackburn with Darwen 0.86)

Which antibiotics

From September 2025 to August 2026.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics
6 in 100 items (of 5,126 antibiotic items, England 8, Blackburn with Darwen 6)
Nitrofurantoin for urine infections
66 in 100 items (of 789 nitrofurantoin and trimethoprim items, England 70, Blackburn with Darwen 72)

One item is one antibiotic on a prescription. STAR-PU weights the practice’s list by age and sex, so practices with older or younger patients can be set side by side; it does not allow for illness, so a practice whose patients have more infections or other conditions can prescribe more for good reasons. Broad-spectrum antibiotics are co-amoxiclav, cephalosporins and quinolones, which kill many kinds of bacteria and are kept for when others will not do. For most urine infections NICE’s first choice is nitrofurantoin or, when the risk of resistance is low, trimethoprim. NHS England has asked practices to favour nitrofurantoin, because the bacteria behind urine infections resist trimethoprim more often; the row shows how many of the two were nitrofurantoin. Blackburn with Darwen and England are the same calculation over every practice there. Only items prescribed by the practice and dispensed in the community are counted.

Source: NHS Business Services Authority, English Prescribing Dataset, September 2025 to August 2026. Items per STAR-PU: UK Health Security Agency and Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (Fingertips), from the same NHS Business Services Authority data, April 2025 to March 2026. Open Government Licence v3.0.

What we cannot measure

  • The quality of the treatment itself: open data shows how patients describe their practice and how soon appointments take place, not clinical outcomes.
  • One doctor or nurse: the figures are for the whole practice.
  • Whether the practice can take you: that depends on its boundary and its list, which the practice decides.
  • This year’s changes: the survey ran in early 2026, and a new team or system since then is not in the figures.
Questions to ask the practice (3)

This does not show in the figures, but you can ask the practice yourself before you register.

  1. Does my address fall inside your boundary, and are you taking new patients?
  2. How do I book an appointment, and how soon can I usually see someone?
  3. Can I ask to see the same GP or nurse each time?

Other GP practices in Blackburn with Darwen

Nearby practices whose grade is clearly higher, then the same primary care network.

Practices serving similar patients in Lancashire and South Cumbria

Practices in the same integrated care board with a similar deprivation decile (the same or the next one) and a list of about the same size, highest grade first, five at most. Only practices with a label are named, and the order is not a ranking: neighbouring grades are often within the margin of error.

Similar GP practices in North West

GP practices in the region with the nearest grade, in other areas.

Common questions

How good is St Georges Surgery?

St Georges Surgery has a Practice Grade of 75.5 out of 100, 1.7 below the England average (77.2), from 107 answers in the 2026 GP Patient Survey and NHS appointment data. The margin of error for patients’ answers reaches the England average, so the difference may come down to who happened to answer.

How soon can I get an appointment at St Georges Surgery?

In August 2026, 65% of appointments at St Georges Surgery took place within two weeks of booking. Time from booking is not the whole wait, and practices record appointments in different ways.

How do I register with St Georges Surgery?

Check that your address is inside the practice’s boundary, then register online, in the NHS App or on a paper form at the practice. You do not need to tell your current practice.

2026 GP Patient Survey: https://www.gp-patient.co.uk/
2024 GP Patient Survey: https://www.gp-patient.co.uk/
2025 GP Patient Survey: https://www.gp-patient.co.uk/
Contains information from NHS England, licenced under the current version of the Open Government Licence
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026
Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026
Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0
Contains information from the Care Quality Commission, licensed under the Open Government Licence. CQC must be acknowledged as the source of the data; CQC is not responsible for our analysis.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Deprivation: English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), averaged for each practice's patients by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (Fingertips).
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Antibiotic prescribing: UK Health Security Agency and Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (Fingertips), from NHS Business Services Authority prescribing data.
Contains information from the NHS Business Services Authority, English Prescribing Dataset, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
All sources and licences

Practice code (ODS): P81058