Letter to patients from our transgender community

The team at Horfield Health Centre (HHC) believe that providing the best quality care to our patients is our top priority.  

Gender identity clinics are currently commissioned by NHS England and there are currently eight clinics available in England. The nearest clinic to Bristol is The Laurels in Exeter.

Gender identity clinics are multi-disciplinary NHS clinics consisting of doctors, nurses and psychologists, and cover issued such as fertility preservation, psychological support, medication and surgery.

Unfortunately, these clinics cannot keep pace with the growing demand for these services and the average waiting times are currently more than 5 years. As GPs, we feel this is an unacceptable level of service, and we continue to campaign for more equitable care for the transgender community. This would involve not only more timely access to specialist care, but also continued resources to fund and train GPs to maintain prescribing and monitoring.

As a result of these long NHS waiting times, people are seeking private treatment, mainly through online providers. 

We have been one of the few practices in the local area to prescribe and monitor some prescription requests from some private providers but have to stop undertaking this work, going forwards.  We know that for those of our patients who are established on medication will need time to take this back to their private provider and we are giving 8 weeks from the date of this letter for this.

The reason why we cannot continue is that we do not have capacity to meet this demand from the private sector and it is not part of our NHS contract to do so.

• It may be helpful to look at our updated private referrals policy.

We are truly sorry that this is not the outcome you were hoping for. If you would like to contact your MP to highlight the issues raised in this letter, here is some information which will help you do this:

• South West - MPs and Lords - UK Parliament

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact your usual GP for any other physical or psychological issue. 

Yours faithfully,

Horfield Health Centre

Published: Apr 9, 2025