A GP has criticised a health watchdog after his Basingstoke practice was listed in the second highest bracket of risk of providing poor care.

Paul Conley, managing partner of the Bermuda and Marlowe Practice, in Shakespeare Road, Popley, said the Care Quality Commission has “got the numbers wrong”.

He was talking about the Intelligent Monitoring Report date released by the watchdog last week, which ranked almost every GP surgery in England in terms of risk of providing poor care.

The watchdog has said the data was not a judgement, and did not necessarily indicate poor GP surgery performance, but was a tool to help it decide where to inspect and when.

Each practice was graded in six bands, with Band One being the highest concern, and Band Six the least risky.

The Bermuda Practice Partnership was given a Band Two rating, which meant in the borough it was the deemed by the watchdog to be the most at risk of providing poor care, with several others falling into the lowest risk band.

The report on the practice stated there was an “elevated risk” that the practice was prescribing too many antibiotics for the age and sex of its patients.

But Dr Conley said the watchdog had conflated figures for Bermuda and Marlowe surgeries which, while run under the same partnership, have different databases for items including prescriptions.

He said: “This is a data problem. We have alerted the CQC that they have got the numbers wrong. It’s highly frustrating. People will look at this and draw conclusions but it is erroneous. I am not against benchmarking figures, but the data has got to be right.”

He added that the CQC had inspected the partnership last year and found that standards were being met.

Nick Kerswel, spokesman for the CQC, said there was “no reason for anyone to be concerned” with a practice that had been ranked in Band Two.

He added: “If they have raised queries with us, we would examine them.”

GP practices which were considered to be least at risk of providing poor care - in Band 6 - included The Beggarwood Surgery, in Broadmere Road, Beggar-wood, The Gillies and Overbridge Medical Partnership, in Sullivan Road, Brighton Hill, and Chineham Medical Practice, in Reading Road, Chineham.

There were no GP practices within the borough of Basingstoke and Deane, or in Hart, categorised in Band One - the most at risk of providing poor care.