Hundreds of GPs are making £300,000 every year – and their pay has surged by around 20 per cent in a decade, a report has found.

Think-tank The Health Foundation has revealed that one in ten family doctors running their own practice in England now earn at least £250,000 per year.

Meanwhile, around one in 20 of these doctors earn more than £300,000.

That is more than most NHS chief executives responsible for running entire hospitals are paid.

And it is around a third more than the highest NHS salary offered for hospital consultants – senior doctors who oversee responsibility for patient care.

Family doctors running their own practice are often referred to as 'GP partners' or 'contractor GPs'.

They are self-employed but often receive contracts from the NHS, and make up 43 per cent of GPs in England today – a drop from 67 per cent in 2015.

The new figures come amid an ongoing dispute between GP partners and the government around underfunding.

Bosses from the British Medical Association (BMA) – the largest trade union for UK doctors – have actively encouraged GPs to reduce their workload since May. 

And officials have threatened to continue and further escalate action unless the government commits to releasing an extra £3.5billion for family doctor services.

In the new report, the Health Foundation found that salaried GPs – employed directly by a practice – are earning less than half the money than those running their own.

Using HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) estimates, they discovered that the average income of a family doctor running their own practice in 2023-24 was £164,000 – a rise of around a fifth from 2013-14, adjusted for inflation.

Salaried GPs received around £75,000 during this time.

The think-tank says there is a 'marked and growing difference between GP contractor and salaried GP income'.

Per session, they estimate a contracted family doctor earns £409, compared to £216 for salaried GPs.

Furthermore, they found that more than 80 per cent of salaried GPs earn less than £100,000 per year, compared with around a fifth of contracted family doctors. 

Disparities between gender pay were also discovered, with men consistently earning more than women across contracted and salaried GPs.

For example, a male contracted family doctor in his 50s had an average income of around £185,000 per year compared with £149,000 for women.

A salaried male GP in his 50s, meanwhile, earned around £81,000 while women in the same age bracket received around £64,000.

The Health Foundation warned that, despite repeated pledges to boost funding, GPs' overall share of the NHS budget fell from 8.8 per cent in 2015-16 to 8.3 per cent in 2025-26

Dr Luisa Pettigrew, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said: 'General practice is the foundation of the NHS. Yet its funding has not kept pace with the role that recurrent governments have expected it to play.'

Last year former health secretary Wes Streeting announced that 2,000 GPs had been recruited.

He vowed to create a 'neighbourhood health service that puts GPs at its heart and makes sure the NHS is there for everyone, whenever they need it'.

Dr Pettigrew added: 'If the government are serious about delivering better neighbourhood health services and strengthening care outside of hospitals, more money will be needed in general practice. 

'A clear, multi-year commitment to increasing investment is needed, alongside a review of all funding flows into general practice and of how they are used to ensure that funding is allocated fairly and efficiently.

'Without this, general practice and neighbourhood health ambitions are being set up to fail, and aspirations to shift care closer to home and reduce costly, avoidable pressure on hospitals will be left unrealised.' 

Dr Pettigrew also said many people will be 'surprised' by the 'high earnings of some GP partners and understandably concerned'.

'But debate about pay should not distract from the most important point in our report - that investment in general practice as a share of NHS spending must increase to improve services for patients and deliver the government’s pledge to shift more care out of hospitals and into communities,' she concluded.

An NHS England spokesman said: 'Thanks to record NHS investment in general practice, staff are delivering record activity, with the number of appointments delivered in June 2026 up almost 50 per cent on the same period in 2019, while patient satisfaction with their practice has started to increase, with more than three quarters of people rating their experience of their GP practice as good.'