Hundreds of practices will be celebrating their involvement in a community running programme next month.

The first anniversary of the Parkrun practice initiative will be celebrated this year on Saturday 1 June.

The initiative, supported by the Royal College of General Practitioners, was set up to promote health and wellbeing by linking with local 5k Parkrun events. More than 800 practices are now signed up.

On Saturday 1, over a thousand GPs and practice staff will take part in a special parkrun UK event, alongside TV personality Dr Zoe Williams and star of BBC One’s Dr in the House, Dr Rangan Chatterjee.

Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, will also join in.

She says: “The Royal College of General Practitioners partnership with parkrun has captured the imagination of GPs and their teams right around the UK. The walk or run approach makes exercise accessible and inclusive, and the pledge day on 1 June is a good way of encouraging more practices to sign up and take part.”

The parkruns, which take place each Saturday morning across the UK, are open to walkers, runners and volunteers of all ages and abilities and take place in local parks using courses generally of two kilometres.

A previous Parkrun celebration was held last year to mark the NHS’s 70th birthday, during which over 146,000 people took part, including 9,000 who participated for the first time.

Dr Andrew Boyd, the Royal College of General Practitioners Clinical Champion for Physical Activity and Lifestyle, commented: “Parkrun provides an accessible, unintimidating local opportunity for patients and staff to increase their activity levels, and have fun doing it, all in the great outdoors – and for free.”