The grand mansions of the Darras Hall estate near Newcastle upon Tyne have long made it one of the area’s most desirable postcodes, popular with Premier League footballers and business magnates.
But even among these, one home stands out. A large, modern, gated abode seemingly modelled on a Mediterranean villa looms over neighbouring homes, with a handsome BMW on the driveway.
The kind of property of which most could only dream, its owners had it built from scratch after the previous house was purchased at a snip and then demolished.
So, who might be behind such opulence? Not, as one might expect, a Newcastle United star or an enterprising entrepreneur. This belongs to a tycoon of a different ilk.
Dr Harpreet Singh Kalra is a doctor with a somewhat unorthodox background. He is a Danish GP who trained in Ukraine‘s now-occupied Donbas region before returning to Copenhagen – and then moving to India to become what he describes as an ‘industry-leading’ hair transplant surgeon. At one point he worked for a clinic that portrayed itself – wrongly – as part of London‘s prestigious Harley Street (more on that later).
Now, he is involved in general practice (working around his hair-transplant business), as the owner and manager of two GP surgeries treating some 7,000 patients in an affluent semi-rural area of County Durham. Meanwhile, last year, the married 45-year-old father of one also opened a popular cafe near his luxurious home, which sells coffee, cakes and ice cream.
To use a hair analogy, with all his commitments, one might say Dr Kalra is spread a little thinly. Be that as it may, few would begrudge a family doctor living a pleasant life given the obvious stresses of the job.
But while the entrepreneurial Dr Kalra was building his dream home, it would appear his outwardly successful professional life was unravelling.
A ‘no confidence’ vote in Dr Harpreet Singh Kalra, who owns and manages two GP surgeries in an affluent area of County Durham, has passed with 96 per cent
Today, the GP finds himself under scrutiny after the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the regulator of health and social care in England, recently placed one of his surgeries, Lanchester Medical Centre, into special measures to protect patients.
Following an inspection last summer, the surgery was rated ‘inadequate’ in four of the five categories the watchdog scrutinises – whether the practice is ‘safe’, ‘effective’, ‘responsive’ and ‘well-led’; it was judged ‘requires improvement’ on whether it is ‘caring’ – in what one long-time NHS worker described as one of the worst reports they had ever seen.
The regulator concluded in November’s report that patients are currently ‘at risk of harm’ at his practice (where Dr Kalra is the sole partner).
The watchdog also spoke to whistleblowers who said staff were ‘bullied’ as part of a ‘toxic culture’. Such were the concerns that Dr Kalra was banned by the CQC from working at his own practice for a prolonged period from August while it was taken over by the local health authority. Last month the GP returned to work after being forced to stand aside, and shows little sign of giving up the practice.
Patients had already raised concerns that the quality of care at the practice had not improved in Dr Kalra’s absence.
Understandably, his patients in the County Durham village of Lanchester are now in revolt. Following three public meetings, they have declared a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Dr Kalra. Their plight has been backed by the local Labour MP – but, in a worrying sign of how little say patients across the country have over their choice of doctor, nothing has been done to stop him resuming his ‘duties’.
In fact, the General Medical Council (GMC) has so far refused to take action against him, despite the damning CQC report.
It is claimed that some elderly residents who should be seeing a GP regularly are hesitant to do so as a result. And there are fears that similar situations could be going on across the country. England is facing a severe GP shortage, according to doctor’s union the British Medical Association, with many newly qualified doctors preferring to take jobs overseas.
As a result of this shortage, patients may increasingly find themselves saddled with GPs who they feel lack the necessary expertise. There is also the fact that, while British-trained doctors are moving abroad, the number of foreign doctors in the UK continues to grow, with 20,000 who qualified overseas joining the medical register in 2024 – compared with 10,000 UK graduates. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to reduce the NHS’s reliance on migrant doctors in favour of ‘homegrown talent’.
To investigate the plight of local patients, the Daily Mail visited the affluent village of Lanchester to attend a gathering of pensioners dressed in fleeces and scarves at a social club. They were outlining their plans for a coup to oust Dr Kalra. The anger bursting from this meeting (and others, apparently, as some 300 villagers have turned up across three hastily arranged forums focussing solely on his return) is all too evident.
‘I wouldn’t trust him to look after a goldfish,’ one infuriated patient tells me, while others ask what say they truly have over their own healthcare.
‘Is he going to have to kill someone before anybody takes notice?’ one asks the chair of the meeting. A ‘no confidence’ motion in the doctor passed with 96 per cent of the vote.
‘The picture painted is pretty grim,’ an older gentleman adds.
‘Our health is the most important thing we have. When you get older you depend on your medical centre for support and help. If we say we have no confidence, can we actually get rid of him?’
Being the sole partner, Dr Kalra runs the surgery as a business and is in charge of the clinical and financial sides. It is certainly lucrative: last year health minister Stephen Kinnock said a third of GP partners earn more than the Prime Minister’s £172,000-a-year salary.
And let’s not forget that Dr Kalra also runs another surgery five miles away from his Lanchester Medical Centre.
A large moustachioed man raises his hand in the meeting.
‘You mentioned the fact it’s a business,’ he says. ‘We don’t want a business, we want a health centre that is going to look after us. Where is my family doctor? Where is my GP? I have got a business person that is running something for money.’
A young woman waits for silence before speaking. ‘That man could have killed me,’ she claims. ‘Not just with health but with mental health. I’ll never be able to trust him. He told me I was fine and I nearly died three times. There hasn’t even been an apology.’
In a statement following the release of the health watchdog’s report in November, Victoria Marsden, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said that when the inspectors visited Lanchester Medical Centre, ‘we found serious leadership failings that jeopardised people’s safety’.
Dr Kalra is accused of relying on an ever-changing supply of locum doctors rather than employing salaried GPs
She added: ‘Our experience tells us that when a service isn’t well-led, this has a knock-on effect on the level of care being given, which is what we found here. ‘Staff told us they were afraid to raise concerns about people’s safety as they felt leaders were unapproachable. Some had experienced bullying, while others said colleagues had been threatened when they tried to speak up.
‘This created a toxic culture where serious safety issues could go without being addressed.
‘It was concerning that leaders didn’t have effective systems and processes in place to manage medicines safely, monitor long-term conditions, or deal with test results appropriately. This meant people were at risk of harm as they could be given the wrong medication or miss important follow-up care due to their results not being managed properly.’
Patients the Daily Mail spoke to have raised wide-ranging concerns. Dr Kalra is accused of relying on an ever-changing supply of locum doctors rather than employing salaried GPs, meaning patients do not have continuity of care.
He is alleged to have dispensed with the services of one much-loved salaried GP over disagreements in how the surgery was being run and is also accused of misdiagnosing illnesses and refusing to properly examine women.
Ann Robinson, 34, says she attended the surgery with rectal bleeding but was sent away by Dr Kalra within three minutes with a haemorrhoid prescription but without a thorough examination.
When Mrs Robinson saw her consultant at a hospital in Newcastle she was told she had a rectal tear that required immediate medical assistance.
‘He needs to be held accountable,’ she says. One man, who asked not to be named, says Dr Kalra had stopped the long-term dementia and chronic back pain medication for his mother, who is in her 90s and in a care home.
He allegedly did so without any notification, despite the son having power of attorney. When he complained, the medication was restarted.
‘The reason I’m so keen to share this is that I don’t want any others to be harmed in this way,’ he says.
‘I am genuinely concerned that a GP who doesn’t seem to recognise his own shortcomings will inevitably harm more patients in the future.’
Another patient, who asked not to be named, says Dr Kalra prescribed her hormone replacement therapy medication incorrectly, leaving her with such significant mood swings, as her hormones fluctuated across three months, that she considered ending her own life. The error was identified by a pharmacist.
‘Everyone makes mistakes but this is a pattern,’ she says. ‘I’m very sceptical about his qualifications.’ All three have made formal complaints to the surgery.
And what of Dr Kalra’s qualifications? Harpreet Singh Kalra hails from Copenhagen’s tiny Sikh community and, according to online references checking, qualified as a doctor at Ukraine’s Luhansk State Medical University, in the since-occupied Donbas region, in 2007. Another biography says he qualified as a doctor in Denmark.
Had he qualified from Luhansk after 2014, when war first broke out in Ukraine, his qualification wouldn’t have been recognised by the GMC. Dr Kalra is then thought to have gone to India in 2012 for training in Delhi with Dr Kapil Dua, described as the ‘best hair transplant surgeon in India’.
When the Daily Mail spoke to Dr Dua, he said Dr Kalra had enrolled on a three-month course because it was ‘cheaper than in the West’, adding that the GP was ‘quite cordial’.
Dr Kalra then appears to have worked mainly at two hair transplant clinics in the North East, the Wimpole Clinic, near his home in Ponteland, and a company called Harley Street Hair Transplants, in Newcastle, which has no link whatsoever to the eponymous street in London’s Marylebone.
When the Daily Mail visited the Wimpole Clinic and asked to speak about Dr Kalra, a colleague offered a hasty ‘no comment’ and ushered the journalist out the door.
But ambition and the entrepreneurial spirit seemingly runs in Dr Kalra’s family. His brother-in-law, a GP who runs four surgeries, lives in a £2million mansion complete with a cinema room, also in Darras Hall. Back at the social club, the doctor’s myriad business interests are raised. ‘He has got too many fingers in too many pies,’ one patient remarks. ‘It’s just a matter of making money as far as he is concerned.’ The plight of the patients has now been taken up by the council and MP.
In comments that could be applied to many small communities around the country amid a GP shortage, Durham County Council councillor Alison Gray said: ‘There is not only one doctor’s surgery… but only one doctor.
One patient says Dr Kalra prescribed her hormone replacement therapy medication incorrectly, leaving her with such significant mood swings that she considered ending her own life
‘My desire is for the people of Lanchester to have access to a good doctor and a choice of doctor. When I read the report I felt absolutely sick. It was awful, worse than I expected.’
Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham, told the Daily Mail: ‘Residents have been raising very serious concerns with me about their experiences with this GP practice. The CQC report makes shocking reading. As their MP, I believe Lanchester Medical Centre patients have been badly let down and deserve a new GP who will provide the high-quality service every NHS patient deserves.’
A GMC source said Dr Kalra’s medical qualification was verified when he registered with the body.
A spokesman added: ‘We are aware of the CQC’s report. We will always take action to protect patients when necessary.’
In a letter to patients following the publication of the CQC report in November, Dr Kalra said he was ‘deeply sorry for the position we now find ourselves in and the faults found in my clinical leadership by the CQC’.
He was asked a number of detailed questions by the Daily Mail, but in a statement, said: ‘The CQC highlighted a number of areas requiring improvement, including aspects of patient care and the management of certain conditions. These areas are being addressed as a priority.
‘We recognise that patients’ experiences vary, and we appreciate the feedback that has been shared with us.
‘This feedback is being considered alongside the CQC’s findings as improvements continue to be implemented, with the aim of providing consistently safe and high-quality care for all patients.
‘I would like to acknowledge the commitment of the staff at Lanchester Medical Centre, who have continued to provide services during a challenging period.
‘The focus remains on learning from the inspection findings, embedding improvements, and working towards providing high-quality, safe care for all.’
But with the country struggling with a GP shortage and retaining home-trained talent, many patients across the country may find themselves with not a dissimilar problem.
