The region struggles to attract new doctors to the area compared to richer parts of the country.

Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group heard several initiatives to try and recruit new GPs to the area had so far been unsuccessful.

Dr Malcolm Ridgway said health bosses need to find ways to make a GP’s job more attractive to bring doctors to the area because they struggle to compete in terms of location.

He said: “All the initiatives we have tried didn’t work. Ultimately it is about how do we make the job attractive and then we can look at how can we make the location attractive.

“It is never going to be as attractive as Oxfordshire or Cornwall. I think Blackburn itself is doing a lot of work to make itself attractive but there are some places it just can’t compete with.”

The total GP headcount across England (excluding registrars, retainers and locums) is 34,395 as of December last year.

This is an increase of 128 (0.4 per cent) from 34,267 in September 2017.

972 of the 34,395 are registered in Lancashire, with 95 of those in Blackburn with Darwen.

There are just 0.437 GPs in Blackburn with Darwen per 1,000 people, compared with 0.503 per 1,000 in Lancashire and 0.574 per 1,000 across the whole of England.

The average patient list size in Blackburn with Darwen is 2,300 compared to 1,987 for Lancashire and 1,740 nationally.

Dr Geraint Jones asked for figures from other CCGs in Lancashire to be provided at the next meeting in May to give better context.

Dr Stephen Gunn said: “The figures don’t look hugely different but it changes our average patient list size from 1,700 to 2,300.”