Thousands of patients in Aylesbury's NHS area waited more than four weeks for GP appointments

Thousands of people in Aylesbury's NHS area had to wait more than four weeks to see a GP after making an appointment in December last year.

New NHS Digital data has revealed that 6,732 patients using services in the Bucks Clinical Commissioning Group had to wait over 28 days.

These delays matched the average number of extended waits reported across England with 3.1% of all patients facing month-long wait-times locally and nationally.

In total, 784,541 GP appointments in the country were completed four weeks after booking was confirmed.

It was a similar story the month before, when in November 3.2% of appointments in England were delayed by over four weeks.

Out of 106 NHS groups, Bucks CCG ranked 56th when it came to the proportion of patients facing extended waits.

The worst area was Sheffield where 6.7% of CCG patients saw a GP more than four weeks after their booking was made.

Over 5% of patients in the East Riding, and Derby and Derbyshire CCGs also had prolonged delays seeing their GPs.

There could be legitimate reasons why bookings occur over a month after appointments are booked.

In certain cases patients may be monitoring their health and organising a follow up booking at an agreed later date.