Ministers have claimed a milestone in the recruitment of thousands of extra staff to primary care – while practice leaders warned of “continuing” collapse.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced the recruitment of 29,000 extra professional staff just as the local medical committee representatives gathered in London for their annual conference. The numbers met a 2019 manifesto promise – but the Royal College of GPs said the Government had failed to meet a second promise, to recruit 6,000 extra doctors.

Meanwhile at the conference of local medical committees, British Medical Association chair Professor Philip Banfield tweeted: “Appalling to hear of the continuing collapse of general practice. The most effective and efficient part of the NHS facing extinction from political choice to underfund and concerted anti-GP media spin.”

Dr Christopher Castle, vice-chair of Hampshire local medical committee, said: “General practice is on the brink of extinction. Politicians and NHS chiefs, you claim to understand this, but your actions say otherwise. Why are we seeing catastrophic closures of local GP surgeries and the scaling up of general practice to a single point of access?”

Barclay said: “We have delivered on our promise a year early to recruit 26,000 extra primary care professionals which means more clinicians delivering better, more specialised and accessible care to patients. Building on the Primary Care Recovery Plan, we are determined to end the 8am scramble, improve technology and reduce bureaucracy.”

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: “It is fantastic to see more than 29,000 staff join our General Practice workforce since 2019, a year ahead of the Government target, following NHS recruitment campaigns with these new staff including mental health practitioners, social prescribers, and pharmacists offering people expert care and advice at their local practice. Thanks to these new GP teams record numbers of appointments are being delivered, with the latest figures showing that more than 31 million appointments took place in March 2023 – up almost a third compared to pre-pandemic.”

RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: “It is positive to see efforts to expand the wider practice team realised, and patients will certainly benefit, but there was another pledge in the Government’s 2019 manifesto – for 6,000 more GPs by 2024 – and on this, things have gone backwards. GPs and our teams are working to our limits to deliver safe, timely and appropriate care, in the face of intense workload and workforce pressures.”

At the conference, GPs voted to reject plans to deploy staff and associate specialist doctors into primary care. The conference called for GPs to be rebranded as “consultants in family medicine” and called for the BMA to set out estimates for the number of people without a GP because of practice closures.