The number of doctors who stopped holding a licence in the UK rose sharply in 2024, according to the GMC’s Workforce report 2025. The report states that 16,124 doctors stopped holding a licence in 2024, up from 11,309 in 2023.  

However, the GMC cautions that a major share of this increase is linked to doctors who are unlikely to have worked in the UK at all and to an administrative process that resumed after being paused during the pandemic. 

The report explains that the largest increase was among nonUK PMQ doctors who had never connected to a designated body (DB). This group more than doubled, rising from 1,955 in 2023 to 5,193 in 2024 (a 166% increase). The GMC says this coincided with the restart of a process to alert doctors that their licence was due to be withdrawn for reasons such as nonpayment of fees, processes that were paused during COVID19 and later addressed through 2023 and the first half of 2024. Because of this link to administrative backlog rather than employment, the report says this “holds little importance for workforce planning debates.”  

The more consequential story for workforce capacity, the GMC argues, lies in the increase in doctors leaving who had previously held a DB connection, a sign they were highly likely to have been employed. 

On this “DBconnected” measure: 

• NonUK PMQ doctors relinquishing their licence grew 26% to 4,880 leavers in 2024. 

• UK PMQ DBconnected leavers increased 10%.  

The report also adds essential context: the total population of licensed, DBconnected doctors increased too. When the GMC accounts for the larger workforce, the change in the leaving rate is smaller than the raw leaver counts suggest. Across all licensed and DBconnected doctors, the proportion leaving rose from 3.2% in 2023 to 3.6% in 2024.  

Even so, the report notes that the increase was larger for nonUK doctors: their DBconnected leaving rate rose from 3.6% in 2023 to 4.3% in 2024.  

The report also highlights a shift among younger UK leavers: UK graduates under 40 relinquishing their licence increased 17% from 2,245 to 2,627, though the proportion leaving in that age group rose by only around one percentage point.  

Why it matters: The GMC’s message is that leaders should not misread administrative leaver spikes as evidence of mass workforce loss, but also should not ignore rising DBconnected leavers, particularly among internationally qualified doctors. The report argues the system must support and inform doctors migrating to the UK, and be transparent about risks and outcomes, because these doctors “often fill vital service gaps.”