The government has decided to extend the provision of supplies of free Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) until March 2022, the NHS confirmed on Thursday (April 8).
The Department of Health and Social Care’s PPE portal can be used by community pharmacies to obtain all the Covid-19 PPE they need and contractors should ensure they have registered for this.
The Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) has recommended the governments of the four UK nations to strengthen advertising and labelling rules of infant formula to help parents make informed decisions and save money.
This follows a CMA study on infant formula and follow-on milks, which found that a combination of factors was leading to poor outcomes for parents.
Evidence reviewed by the CMA showed that parents could save around £300 in a baby’s first year of life by switching from a popular mid-priced product to a low-priced brand.
The CMA has put forward several recommendations, including:
The CMA has also recommended strengthening the roles of relevant authorities, requiring them to approve the packaging of all infant formula products before sale.
Additionally, the CMA has recommended strengthening the role of relevant authorities by requiring them to approve the packaging of all infant formula products before sale
Currently, companies can put products onto the market before their labels have been reviewed.
Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, emphasised that these proposals were designed to help parents make “the best choices for them and their babies, with access to better information, while sharpening the effectiveness of the existing rules.”
Many parents choose a brand in vulnerable circumstances based on incomplete information, often believing that higher prices must mean better quality, Cardel noted, stating that this is happening despite NHS advice stating that “all brands will meet your baby’s nutritional needs, regardless of brand or price.”
“Our proposals will also make it easier for regulations to be properly enforced, while ensuring manufacturers and retailers can be more confident in what they can and can’t do according to law,” she added.
Baroness Walmsley, chair of the House of Lords committee inquiry into food, diet and obesity, welcomed the CMA’s proposals, but stressed the need for further action on advertising of processed foods.
“While the proposals are welcome, they are a first step,” she said.
“The government must now turn its attention to the labelling, advertising and marketing of processed foods aimed at young children to prevent them being advertised for babies under four months, using misleading health claims and to reduce the permitted amount of free sugars in them.”
Walmsley acknowledged the rising cost of formula milk, which has gone up by 31 per cent in two years.
She raised concern that it is putting a lot of pressure on the budgets of families, particularly poorer families who tend to rely on them more.
She called on the government to implement the CMA’s recommendations immediately and ensure their enforcement.
The the House of Lords committee inquiry into food, diet and obesity completed its work in 2024 and published its report entitled Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system in October 2024.
David Thomas, owner of LT Chemists in Newport, will replace Raj Aggarwal OBE as the next National Pharmacy Association (NPA) board member for Wales, following an uncontested election this month.
Following the conclusion of a nomination process last week, Baldev Bange, Aisling O’Brien, Sehar Shahid, and Sanjay Ganvir have been re-elected to the Board, representing areas of England and Scotland, according to a statement from NPA.
Ashley Cohen, Sanjeev Panesar, Sukhi Basra, Salim Jetha, Olivier Picard, and Nick Kaye continue their terms without needing to stand for election this time. They still have another two years to run on their terms as board members.
Two board positions remain open. The nomination process is ongoing in Northern Ireland, while in England, five NPA members are contesting the remaining seat, which is open to any member with up to five pharmacies.
Hustings for this final board position in England will take place shortly and a ballot for this position will take place later this month, the NPA said.
Recruitment is also currently underway for the new chief executive to succeed Paul Rees.
Paul Rees MBE stepped down as NPA chief executive in the new year to take on a new role as interim chief executive and registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
He joined the NMC on a one-year contract starting January 20, where he is responsible for overseeing the development of a multi-year programme aimed at transforming the NMC’s culture and performance.
The current Board will hold its final meetings on 10–11 March, with the newly elected members assuming their roles in April.
NPA chair Nick Kaye welcomed Thomas to the board, which he described as “the dynamic, diverse and innovative national leadership of independent community pharmacy”.
On his new role, David said: “It’s a great privilege and I’ll do my utmost to ensure that NPA members in Wales are well represented and supported throughout my period on the board.”
Raj Aggarwal OBE, a longstanding board member, will step down from the position after more than a decade of service.
Under the NPA’s modified governance cycle, around half of the board positions are up for election every two years.
Pharmacy technicians and assistants should be enabled to talk to patients about their medications to improve medicines adherence, a new report has recommended.
The report, How medicines optimisation contributes to population health, published recently by policy institute Public Policy Projects, highlighted that non-adherence to medicines remains a critical issue, with an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of medicines for long-term conditions not taken as prescribed.
“There is an untapped opportunity to leverage community pharmacy, which is often patients’ most frequent point of contact with the NHS, to improve medicines adherence,” the report stated.
It has urged the NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to consider “how to better utilise the skill mix across the whole pharmacy team” as part of future workforce reform to improve medicines adherence.
For example, it suggested enabling pharmacy technicians and assistants to counsel patients on their medications.
“This would more effectively distribute workload, freeing up time for pharmacists to take a more strategic role in population health management,” the report noted.
With discussions ongoing about the new Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) for 2024/25 and 2025/26 between Community Pharmacy England (CPE), NHS England, and DHSC, the report also recommended expanding the contract to allow community pharmacy to deliver medicines reviews.
“By capitalising on community pharmacy’s frequent interactions and strong relationships with local communities, enabling the sector to conduct medicines reviews would reduce pressure across systems and allow patients more flexible and convenient access to care,” it said.
Furthermore, the report argued that the current workforce model is not sufficient to support the community pharmacy sector to deliver contracted services and enable additional service delivery.
It suggested mandating a minimum of two pharmacists in community pharmacies – one to support medicines supply and the other for the delivery of clinical services – as part of future workforce planning.
The report is based on insights from a roundtable discussion with pharmacy experts, chaired by Minesh Parbat, chief pharmacist at NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB.
Attendees included ICB chief pharmacists, acute trust chief pharmacists, pharmacy policy experts, NPA board members, directors of pharmacy integration, and pharmacy technicians.
Parbat said: “The findings in this report underscore pharmacy’s ability to go further to improve health outcomes through medicines optimisation and the potential to deliver pharmaceutical interventions to target health inequalities more broadly.”
“In particular, by leveraging the frequent patient contact seen by community pharmacies, we can go further to support the improvement of medicines adherence, which in turn supports the NHS to gain the maximum value out of the medicines it purchases.”
He also emphasised the need to integrate pharmacies into broader healthcare and data systems to ensure patients receive timely and effective care, which will also benefit the wider NHS.
Here are some other recommendations from Public Policy Projects –
However, the report underscored that persistent challenges facing the sector must be addressed for pharmacies to take a more central role in population health management.
The Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists (GHP) has launched a national campaign advocating for pharmacists working in the NHS to have a minimum of 10% of their contracted hours protected for supporting professional activities (SPA).
In a statement published on 7 February 2025, the GHP emphasised that this protected time “should be recognized by employers and embedded in job plans.”
The organisation highlighted the existing inconsistency across the UK regarding the amount of SPA time allocated to pharmacists and stressed the need for a consistent amount of development to “allow pharmacists to be able to be safe practitioners, to meet the demands of service development, and to be able to safely mentor and supervise more junior colleagues.”
The GHP raised concerns that many pharmacists end up doing “unpaid work” to catch up with the required training or completing self-learning in their own time.
“This pressure is unfair and unsustainable, potentially contributing to burnout and in combination with all the other pressures, leads to pharmacists leaving the NHS,” it stated.
The GHP asserted that a minimum of 10% of contracted hours for SPA is “a strongly justifiable argument.”
“This is to reflect the increase in professional responsibilities such as supervising junior colleagues with their prescribing, supporting undergraduate students, postgraduate education requirements, portfolio development, professional credentialing, and much more,” it explained.
The organisation stressed that it is within the scope of trusts, health boards and employers to grant this time to pharmacists, citing similar provisions in other professions.
Rob Connah, president of the GHP, underscored the urgency of implementing mandated protected learning time (PLT), particularly with the introduction of the General Pharmaceutical Council’s ‘Standards for the Initial Education and Training of Pharmacists’ in 2021.
With the new standards, all newly registered pharmacists would be able to prescribe independently from 2026.
Connah told The Pharmaceutical Journal: “There is a drastic increase of experiential learning, which places an emphasis on practice supervisors, and from 2025–2026, this will increase again to include a responsibility for developing safe prescribers at the point of registration.
“This increase in responsibility is a national expectation with little additional resource seen for individual pharmacists to accommodate.
“As services develop and become increasingly reliant upon specialist pharmacist skills and knowledge, the need for postgraduate qualifications has similarly increased. Services are limited by poor recruitment, retention and staff burnout.”
Claire Anderson, president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), echoed these concerns, calling on governments, NHS bodies, and employers to ensure regular, funded PLT and the infrastructure needed to support it to enable continuous professional development from foundation pharmacists to consultant level across Great Britain.
“We believe it is essential that learning time is considered in any future workforce plans,” she said.
Anderson also noted that PLT was a key topic at their 2024 workforce wellbeing roundtable with Pharmacist Support and will remain central to discussions with stakeholders on collaborative efforts to better support the pharmacy workforce.
A survey conducted by the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) in January revealed that over two-thirds of frontline pharmacists had not received protected learning time during contracted hours or financial compensation from their employer for training related to Pharmacy First.
Regarding future service expansions, 97% of respondents agreed that protected learning time or paid training should be mandatory to support pharmacists and staff in delivering additional pathways and conditions.
Additionally, three-quarters (75%) of surveyed pharmacists felt that the pharmacies they work in were not adequately staffed to safely deliver Pharmacy First and other NHS contractual services.
Locum pharmacists expressed challenges in completing extensive training without compensation for their time or lost earnings, while part-time pharmacists reported feeling stressed due to time pressures associated with training.
The 2025/26 pharmacy contract consultation will include a review of the medicine margin and reimbursement arrangements, health and care minister Stephen Kinnock has confirmed.
Kinnock made this statement in response to a written question from Nick Timothy, Conservative MP for West Suffolk, who asked the secretary of state for health and social care, if he will review the reimbursement system for pharmacies and GP practices dispensing medicines.
Kinnock stated that consultation with Community Pharmacy England (CPE) for the 2025/26 Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) has started and will include “reviewing the allowance for medicine margin as part of funding, and any further changes to the reimbursement arrangements.”
However, he clarified that there are currently no plans to review the reimbursement system for general practices (GPs) dispensing medicines.
Kinnock said: “Dispensing practices receive a dispensing fee, approximately £2.00 to £2.30 per item, which is intended to cover dispensing costs.
“This fee is calculated based on forecasted volumes of prescriptions to be dispensed and the size of the funding envelope, according to a methodology agreed by the Department, the General Practitioners Committee (GPC), NHS Employers, and the Welsh Government.”
He also noted that an updated methodology, agreed between the British Medical Association (BMA) and NHS England, was implemented in October 2023 to address the issue of continuing fluctuation between over and underspend year on year, the alternating pattern of over and under spends.
Nevertheless, he said the ongoing 2025/26 GP Contract discussions will consider all proposed policy changes, including dispensing practices, and an announcement will be made before April 2025.
Consultations between NHS England and the BMA’s GPC England on the new GP contract began on 19 December.
Meanwhile, the Dispensing Doctors' Association (DDA) has announced they will follow up on this issue in Parliament to clarify “the confusion between reimbursement and remuneration.”
When the start of the 25/26 pharmacy funding contract was announced on 28 January, Kinnock acknowledged the vital role of community pharmacies in shifting care from hospitals to the community.
He committed to working closely with CPE to agree “a package of funding that is reflective of the important support that they provide to patients up and down the country.”
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has urged the government to conclude funding consultations urgently and ensure that much-needed financial support reaches struggling pharmacies.
The association has warned that if the new funding settlement fails to meet its five key tests, they may recommend collective action—including reducing opening hours to contractual minimums.
