A health watchdog has voiced concern after discovering only 60 per cent of GP practices in Enfield have their own websites.

Healthwatch Enfield found that 31 of 49 practices they looked at have their own websites after complaints from users about booking an appointment.

It will be mandatory for GP practices to offer online appointments and prescription renewals from April next year and this could mean that 37 per cent of practices who don’t yet have a website will not be able to meet the deadline.

Healthwatch Enfield chief executive Lorna Reith said: “We believe it is important that patients have easy access to information and are pleased that most practices are providing this.

“Our audit highlighted areas where there were problems and we were also pleased at how quickly a number of practices came back to us to say they’d put things right.

“However, we remain concerned about the number of surgeries that appear to have no website and at the limited number who provide information about interpreters. We have raised this with both NHS England and the Enfield Clinical Commissioning Group.”

The issue was hotly debated at Healthwatch Enfield’s first annual conference, held at Green Towers Community Centre, in Edmonton.

The audit did find that 96 per cent (47 out of 49 practices) had correct out of hours information on their answerphone messages and only one failed to include any message.