How to register with a GP in Norfolk

What you need to register

No documents. The NHS guidance on how to register with a GP surgery says you do not need ID, proof of address or proof of immigration status. Your NHS number helps the practice find your records but is not required; it is printed on any NHS letter, prescription or test result, and you can see it in the NHS App. If a receptionist asks for a utility bill, the nhs.uk page is the thing to show them.

Finding a practice that covers your address

Start with the NHS Find a GP search. Put in your new postcode and it lists the practices nearby; each practice’s page says whether it is currently accepting new patients. In a market town the choice is usually obvious: in Fakenham, for example, it is Fakenham Medical Practice at Meditrina House on Trinity Road. In the villages the nearest surgery is often a branch of a practice based somewhere else.

Branches matter because you register with the practice, not the building. Holt Medical Practice, which covers Holt, runs its main surgery at Kelling Hospital in High Kelling and a branch at Melton Constable. The Beaches Medical Centre in Gorleston has sites on Sussex Road and Magdalen Way. The Reepham and Aylsham Medical Practice has a surgery in each town. If one site has no appointments, ask about the other.

Each practice has a defined area, and the national online form checks your postcode against it before your application goes through. You can apply to a practice outside your area and some will accept you, but nhs.uk warns that this may affect the services you get, including home visits and urgent care from your GP. In a village, where the practice that took you on may be in another town, that can mean no home visit when you most need one. Join a practice that covers your postcode unless you have a particular reason not to.

Registering

Every GP practice in England has had to offer the national Register with a GP surgery service since October 2024, and 99.6% of practices use it. You can reach it from the practice’s own website or from nhs.uk. The form takes about 15 minutes for each person. If you already have the NHS App and are registered somewhere else, you can change practice in the app. If you would rather use paper, download the registration form from nhs.uk, fill it in and take it to the surgery.

Children under 16 are usually registered by a parent or guardian, and a carer, paid or unpaid, can register the person they look after. If you do not have a permanent address, you can register using a temporary address or the address of the surgery itself.

Registration usually goes through within five days of the practice getting your details. A practice can turn you down if it is not taking new patients, if you live outside its area, or if it has removed you from its list before, and it must write to you within 14 days to say why. You do not need to tell your old practice that you have moved; it is told automatically once the new one registers you.

Prescriptions after the move

If you take anything regularly, ask the new practice for a medication review at your first appointment, and do not let the supply from your old practice run out before then. If you order repeats online, the prescription goes electronically to the pharmacy you have chosen. Change that choice as soon as you know which chemist you will use, because nhs.uk warns that prescriptions already requested may still go to the old one.

Practices that dispense their own medicines

Some rural practices run their own dispensary, so you collect your medicines at the surgery. The rule is set by your home address. Under the NHS pharmaceutical services regulations, a practice can dispense to a patient who lives in a designated rural area, a controlled locality, and more than 1.6 kilometres (about a mile) from a pharmacy, or who would have serious difficulty reaching one. Two households on the same practice list can therefore have different arrangements. Across England, 935 dispensing practices serve 9.54 million registered patients, according to the Dispensing Doctors’ Association.

Hoveton and Wroxham Medical Centre, Wells Health Centre and the Humbleyard Practice, for its Hethersett and Mulbarton patients, all dispense. If you are buying in a village with no chemist, ask the practice before you register whether it will dispense for your address.

Primary care networks

Practices are grouped into primary care networks, which NHS England describes as typically serving communities of 30,000 to 50,000 people. Some clinics and staff are shared across the network rather than based at your own surgery, so ask which network the practice belongs to and what it runs (see NHS England on primary care networks).

Recent changes to watch for

Practices close and merge, and the list you see on a relocation website can be out of date. Two recent examples:

• In Dereham, Toftwood Medical Centre closed on 31 March 2025 and its patients were moved to Orchard Surgery and Theatre Royal Surgery.
• Holt Medical Practice closed its Blakeney branch on 30 June 2025. Blakeney patients now use the sites at High Kelling or Melton Constable, and a machine at Blakeney Village Hall lets them collect medicines at any hour.

If every practice near you is full

1. Try the other practices that cover your postcode. Find a GP shows them all.
2. Ask whether a branch surgery has space, since registration is with the whole practice.
3. Contact the integrated care board. nhs.uk tells anyone who cannot register to go to their local ICB, which for Norfolk is NHS Norfolk and Suffolk ICB. Its website has a GP locator for every practice in the two counties.
4. Until you are registered, use NHS 111 or a pharmacy for anything that cannot wait.

Temporary residents

If you are in Norfolk for a while without moving, a summer in a coastal cottage for instance, you can register with a local practice as a temporary patient for up to three months and keep your usual GP at home. If the practice refuses, it must still give you any treatment you need immediately, for up to 14 days.

The integrated care board changed in April 2026

NHS Norfolk and Suffolk Integrated Care Board was set up on 1 April 2026. It replaced NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB and NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB, and plans and funds health services for about 1.7 million people. Colchester and Tendring moved to NHS Essex ICB. For patients, the practices and the doctors stayed the same. The ICB is also where nhs.uk sends people who cannot find an NHS dentist.

Related guides

For the rest of the move, see the moving to Norfolk checklist and the Norwich area guide. If you are buying on the north Norfolk coast, read the coastal erosion buyer’s guide as well.

This guide is general information, not medical or legal advice. The official NHS guidance is at nhs.uk/nhs-services/gps/how-to-register-with-a-gp-surgery/.

Moving services

How we produced this guide

The registration rules come from the nhs.uk pages on registering with a GP, finding your NHS number, finding a dentist and nominating a pharmacy, and from NHS England Digital’s page on the Register with a GP surgery service. The dispensing rule is from regulation 48 of the NHS (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013. Practice details come from nhs.uk practice pages, the practices’ own websites, the NHS Norfolk and Suffolk ICB website and the Care Quality Commission. The median age figure is from the ONS 2021 Census. We checked all of these on 24 September 2026. See our methodology page for how we work.