Private Sexual Health Clinic in London

NHS sexual health and GUM clinics in London are free to everyone, including people who are not registered with a GP and visitors from overseas. Free STD testing and free STD screening, treatment, contraception, PrEP and PEP are all part of that, and Sexual Health London posts free STI test kits to most London boroughs.

We are private, so we charge. What you get for it is a time you pick, usually the same day, and a GP who talks you through the result. Our private STI testing starts at £299, and a full sexual health screening with a GP appointment is £559.

Sometimes, but a lot less often than people assume. Most NHS sexual health clinics in London now run on booked appointments, and where walk-in or open-access sessions still exist they tend to be short, capped for the day and gone early. Some sites take appointments only. Check that clinic’s own website on the day rather than turning up and hoping.

We are private and appointment-based, so there is no walk-in sexual health clinic here. Same-day and next-day slots are usually free seven days a week, 9am to 7pm, which for most people beats queueing.

Yes. Sexual Health London, usually written SHL.uk, is the official NHS online sexual health service commissioned by London boroughs. It posts free STI test kits for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, HIV and syphilis to eligible London residents aged 16 and over, and results come back by text or through your account. It is a real NHS service and it is free.

What it cannot do is see you today or have a doctor go through the result with you. That is the gap a private appointment fills, and if neither of those matters to you, the free kit is the sensible option.

If you are wondering where to get tested, or where you can get tested for STDs without paying, there are three routes, and none of them needs a GP referral. Order a free NHS STI test kit through Sexual Health London or SH:24 and post it back, which works well if you have no symptoms. Go to an NHS sexual health or GUM clinic, which is free and also covers throat and rectal swabs, treatment, PrEP and partner notification, though you may wait.

Or book privately, which is what we do: pick a time, usually same-day or next-day, give a blood and urine sample, see a GP, and walk out with a written report you can take anywhere afterwards.

Private STI testing in London runs from around £35 for one marker up to several hundred pounds for a full screen with a doctor attached. Ours are £299 for the 7-in-1 STI PCR panel, £319 for the HIV and hepatitis blood screen, and £599 for the Complete STI Test, which puts the blood serology and the full PCR panel together.

The Men’s and Women’s STI Screening packages are £559 for the Standard panel and £829 for the Advanced eleven-organism panel, and both include an ultrasound in the same visit, a GP appointment, a medication review and a written report. Compare what is actually in the price rather than the headline number, because the cheapest options are usually the lab panel on its own with nobody to explain it.

Yes. Same-day and next-day appointments are usually available at both clinics, seven days a week from 9am to 7pm, and everything done in the clinic happens in that one visit: the blood sample, the urine sample and the GP consultation. So if you have been looking for a same day STI test London, same day STD testing or same day HIV testing, that part is straightforward, and the HIV test sits inside the HIV and hepatitis screen.

One honest caveat. Same-day STI testing does not mean same-day results. Samples go to an external laboratory, so the Standard panel comes back in one to three working days and the Advanced panel in four. Anyone promising a full panel back the same day is describing a much narrower test.

There is no real difference. STI, meaning sexually transmitted infection, is the term the UK now prefers, because you can carry an infection without it ever causing disease or symptoms. STD is the older wording and people still search for it constantly.

GUM stands for genitourinary medicine and is the traditional NHS name for a sexual health clinic, which is why you will see people looking for a GUM clinic near me or even a GUM hospital. STI and STD testing describe the same laboratory tests, so whether you searched for testing for an STD, an STI STD test near me, a sexual health check or a GUM screen, you have landed in the right place.

The 7-in-1 PCR panel covers chlamydia, gonorrhoea, mycoplasma genitalium, ureaplasma, trichomonas, gardnerella and herpes simplex I and II from a single urine sample, with resistance testing added automatically if mycoplasma comes back positive. The HIV and hepatitis screen covers HIV 1 and 2 with p24 antigen, syphilis, hepatitis B surface antigen and hepatitis C antibodies and antigen.

The Complete STI Test and the Advanced screening packages run both, which is eleven organisms in total. If you came here looking for a chlamydia test, a gonorrhoea test, a herpes test or a syphilis test on its own, each of those sits inside these panels rather than being sold separately.

It depends on the infection, and testing too early is far and away the most common reason a result misleads someone. Chlamydia and gonorrhoea can be tested from about two weeks after exposure. Most HIV infections show up by four weeks on a fourth-generation test, and a negative at 45 days is taken as conclusive. Syphilis is often detectable from three to four weeks but needs a repeat at twelve weeks to be ruled out properly. Hepatitis B and C can take up to three months.

If you have symptoms now, do not sit and wait for a window period. Get seen sooner and say what is going on, because symptoms change what needs testing.

It is confidential. Nothing goes to your NHS GP, your employer or your insurer without you saying so, and your samples and your consultation happen in private rooms inside a busy general clinic, so nothing about being there says why you came. Records are held under UK data protection law and the clinic is ICO registered.

It is not anonymous, though. We need your name and date of birth so results, treatment and any referral land on the right record, and every UK sexual health service works the same way. A small number of infections carry statutory public health reporting duties in England, handled by the laboratory and clinician as normal, and your GP will explain exactly what that means before anything happens.

Our HIV and Hepatitis Screen is £319 and uses one blood sample to test HIV 1 and 2 with p24 antigen, syphilis, hepatitis B surface antigen and hepatitis C antibodies and antigen. It is a fourth-generation test, which is the current UK standard, and the same HIV test sits inside every full screening package. Same-day appointments are usually available.

Free HIV testing is also easy to find in London, through NHS sexual health clinics, through free postal kits from Sexual Health London, and through charities such as Terrence Higgins Trust. Most HIV infections are detectable by four weeks after exposure, with a negative at 45 days taken as conclusive.

Do not book a test. Post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, can stop an HIV infection taking hold, but only if you start it quickly, ideally within hours and no later than 72 hours after exposure. Go to an NHS sexual health clinic now, or to A&E if they are closed.

A screening test cannot help you inside that window, and waiting for one burns the time in which something can actually be done. We do not provide PEP, and this is the one situation where an NHS service is straightforwardly the right answer.

Our panels use blood and urine, and a urine sample only tests the urethra. A clear urine result does not rule out an infection in the throat or the rectum. If you have had oral or anal sex, those sites need their own swabs, so tell the team when you book and they will either arrange it or point you somewhere that can.

NHS sexual health clinics do throat and rectal swabs routinely and free of charge. Asking for site-specific testing is completely normal, and it is much better raised before your appointment than after your results.

You can get one free. Sexual Health London posts free STI test kits to eligible residents across most London boroughs, covering chlamydia, gonorrhoea, HIV and syphilis, and SH:24 runs the same service in several areas. NHS clinics also test and treat for free in person.

You can also order an STI test online privately if you would rather not wait for an NHS kit. An at home STI test or STD test kit is a sensible choice if you have no symptoms and you follow the instructions carefully. The catch is the obvious one: you take your own sample so mistakes are invisible, turnaround depends on the post as well as the lab, nobody examines you, and a positive result arrives with nobody attached to it. If you have symptoms, or you want the result explained properly, book an appointment instead.

A doctor rings you, explains what the result means and tells you what happens next, rather than emailing you a list of numbers. Some infections, chlamydia among them, are simple to manage in primary care. Others, including HIV, syphilis, gonorrhoea and hepatitis B and C, are looked after by specialist NHS sexual health services, partly because that is where the expertise is and partly because of antibiotic resistance monitoring, test of cure and follow-up.

Where that is the right route, you go with confirmed laboratory results in hand, which makes that appointment far more useful than turning up with a question. Partner notification gets discussed at the same time, and NHS services can do it anonymously for you. Treatment and medication are priced separately and are not included in the screening price.

Our Central London sexual health clinic is at 27 Welbeck Street, W1G 8EN, in the Harley Street Medical District, two minutes from Bond Street on the Elizabeth, Central and Jubilee lines. That is roughly 15 minutes from Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf and Stratford in east London, 10 from Paddington, and 15 from Victoria, Waterloo and London Bridge. The second clinic is at 54–56 Victoria Street, St Albans AL1 3HZ, a short walk from St Albans City station. Both open seven days a week, 9am to 7pm.

If what you actually want is a free NHS clinic near you, every London borough has one, including well-known sites in Soho, Archway, Fulham, Bloomsbury, Southwark, Hammersmith and across east London. Use the NHS ‘find a sexual health clinic’ tool or Sexual Health London for current addresses and opening hours, which change more often than most directories manage to keep up with.