NEARLY 140,000 sick notes were given to patients by GPs in Bradford and Craven in 2022 - a higher rate than the rest of England - new figures show.

For the last decade, GPs have been able to provide patients with electronic 'fit notes', which tell employers if a patient is too ill to work, or give other recommendations, such as reducing their working hours.

New figures from NHS England show 139,228 fit notes were provided by GPs in the former NHS Bradford District and Craven Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area in 2022, or an average of 11,602 a month.

This means there were 35,314 fit notes given out for every 100,000 patients aged 18 to 65 in the area – a higher rate than England as a whole, which had 27,789 per 100,000 patients.

These figures are for the number of individual fit notes, rather than patients – a single patient may have been given multiple notes over the course of the year.

Across England 10.7 million fit notes were issued last year – up from 10.5 million the year before, and 10.2 million in 2019, the year before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, there was a four per-cent decrease in the number of fit notes issued in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the same quarter in 2021.

The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this year the Government is looking into ways of reforming the fit note system to limit the impact of long-term sickness on the economy.

John Appleby, director of research at health charity Nuffield Trust, said: “Aside from the impact on the labour market, tackling recent rises in long-term sickness will represent a challenge to health services as they grapple with the demands of post-pandemic recovery.”

Women were disproportionately likely to be the recipients of fit notes –receiving 57.9 per-cent of all fit notes last year.

In England, the number of fit notes issued for a period of five weeks or more rose from 4.2 million in 2021 to 4.5 million last year.

A large majority of fit notes do not give a specific diagnosis, but more than a million fit notes were issued for mental and behavioural disorders in 2022, including 1,208 in Bradford and Craven.

Recent research by the Learning and Work Institute found people in lower-paid occupations are more likely to leave the labour market due to ill health.

The Bradford and Craven CCG declined to comment on the figures.