A doctor who earned more than £200 000 (€240 000; $314 000) a year running an out of hours GP service in southwest London while also in full time practice as a GP failed to visit patients when he was on a weekend rota because he was at his second home 225 km away in Norfolk.

Ravi Sondhi also took an unauthorised £100 000 from the out of hours service, Croydoc, for his own purposes and organised overnight rotas so that he and the other doctors who did them got a full night’s pay for working only one third of the rota each night. Unknown to the primary care trusts’ contract managers who used the service, there was …