‘Mystery shoppers’ found that only three of all GP surgeries in Croydon gave consistently correct information on how to register at their surgeries.

Many were found to put unnecessary barriers in the way of patients registering, such as asking for ID or full address details – which are not a requirement for registering at a GP.

Healthwatch Croydon found that these barriers to registering mean more patients are likely to end up heading to accident and emergency instead.

The organisation carried out a mystery shop of all 57 surgeries in the borough and released its findings on Friday (March 29).

Staff and volunteers rang each surgery between November and December last year, asking one question ‘how do I register with your practice?’

At two surgeries nobody picked up the phone after 12 minutes, but the average was two and a half minutes.

The exercise found that 77% of practices did not give the national standard information that patients can just fill in a form without any identification.

And just 15% gave the correct information, but not all gave consistently good customer service

But it wasn’t all bad with 70% of surgeries seen as being helpful over the phone.

Overall it found that three surgeries achieved positive results in all areas of staff attitude, helpfulness and most importantly accuracy in line with national standards.

Following the exercise, Healthwatch Croydon has made a series of recommendations to improve the service across the board.

To make registering easier it says that GPs should make it clear that people without an address can register with the GP practice address and that ID is not needed.

It adds that this information should all be readily available on websites.

It also recommends that there should be dedicated phone lines with specially trained staff to reduce wait times and for a better patient experience.

Gordon Kay, Healthwatch’s Croydon manager, said: “GP registration is central to enable people to access the health services they need.

“It is also important that health service commissioners know how many residents are registered so that services can be planned, managed and delivered accurately.

“We have found inconsistent information about registration with common-place barriers such as asking for ID, and requiring addresses – details which are not required to register.

“We have also found really good examples of those GPs who have done this right.”

GPs in the borough are commissioned by the Croydon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) but are privately-run practices.

Dr Agnelo Fernandes, clinical chairman of the CCG said: “We thank Healthwatch Croydon for their mystery shopper survey.

“It is pleasing to note that local people think that our general practice colleagues were mainly positive and helpful.

“It is also recognised, however, that there is always room for improvement and will work with our GP colleagues to address the gaps raised in the report.”