Pharmacists to hold ballot on action over funding cuts

PHARMACISTS will consider taking industrial action in order to bring to the public’s attention the “slow death of community pharmacy”, the head of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has told Eastern Eye.

The NPA, which represents 6,000 community pharmacies across the UK, announced last Thursday (19) that it will be sending a formal ballot to its members to vote on work to rule plans to protest against a decade of cuts to pharmacy funding.

The ballot will ask pharmacies to consider a range of actions if the financial situation for pharmacies does not improve.

This includes a reduction in services; cutting hours to contract minimums; withdrawal of free deliveries or ending the provision of free blister packs; ceasing to share data with the NHS unless it’s a legal requirement; and considering serving notice on a range of locally contracted services, negotiated directly with local authorities. The ballot will be open for responses for six weeks and any action supported by a majority of pharmacies could take place before Christmas.

Paul Rees, CEO at the NPA, refuted suggestions that the action by pharmacists would have a negative impact on patient care.

“This is all about the movement to save our pharmacies because 1,500 have closed in the last 10 years, seven are closing each week, and three quarters are in the red,” Rees told Eastern Eye.

“In the last decade, there’s been a massive increase in dispensing, in volume – community pharmacy has to do something to safeguard patient care.

“If things carried on the same trajectory, with fewer pharmacies and more dispensing, patient care would be compromised.

“We’re asking our members, do they want to consider these work to rule options as a way of safeguarding patient care in the long term and safeguarding financial sustainability.”

Rees accepted that there may be some inconvenience for patients, but stressed that it’s “far better for pharmacies to still exist than to not exist at all”.

“This is a profession that has been taken for granted for too long, and so many pharmacy owners have had to borrow money and re-mortgage their homes just to keep going.”

The ballot warns that patient safety could be compromised if the current level of closures and workload pressures continue.

The NPA estimates that funding has fallen by 40 per cent of real terms in the past decade.

British Asians make up a large contingent of community pharmacists. Of the 51,184 pharmacists in England, 43.6 per cent are from an Asian or Asian British background, according to the General Pharmaceutical Council.

In June, the NPA revealed that two-thirds of pharmacies in England have had to cut their opening hours since 2015 to reduce costs.

An analysis of opening hours of a sample of 110 pharmacies in England between 2015 and 2024 showed that 63 per cent have reduced their opening hours by an average of 6.1 hours per week.

As of January 2023, due to rising inflation, community pharmacies in England have lost £1.6 billion in funding since 2015-2016.

Last Monday (16), Baroness Merron, parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care, said the government would start negotiations for the 2024-2025 pharmacy funding contract “as a matter of urgency”.

The most recent five-year contract for pharmacies in England expired in April. The NPA is calling for a £1.3 billion funding increase in England to plug the financial blockhole facing community pharmacies.

Janet Morrison, CEO of Community Pharmacy England (CPE), which negotiates on behalf of the profession, told Eastern Eye she will take on board the responses from the ballot when she meets the DHSC. “Relentless funding constraints and rising costs have put community pharmacies in a desperate and impossible position. Like everyone in the sector, we are in favour of anything that helps this case, and we have been clear about the situation in all our meetings with and submissions to the new government and the NHS,” said Morrison.

“We recognise that many business owners and their teams and other national organisations want to do their bit to make the case for community pharmacy. The more voices we have making the same case for pharmacy the better, and where we can, we and LPCs (Local Pharmaceutical Committees) will continue to work collaboratively with all of them: our doors are always open.”

Morrison was part of a delegation, led by the NPA, last Thursday that delivered a petition of more than 350,000 signatures to Downing Street calling for action to support community pharmacies.

“Our target was to get 300,000 signatures, because that’s what the Royal College of GPs amassed ten years ago when they ran a similar campaign for more resources for general practice. We’ve got 350,000 signatures, and that shows the public care as much about community pharmacy as it does about general practice,” said Rees.

Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS in England, commissioned by the government, said the system is in “critical condition”.

Darzi said there was “huge potential” of pharmacy within healthcare and felt community pharmacy had “traditionally been one of the great strengths of the health service in England”.

However, Darzi’s report also outlined concerns around pharmacy closures in recent years and he expressed a “very real risk” that community pharmacy could soon find itself with “too few resources in the places where it is needed the most”.

“What we need is for the government to take a lead from the report and step up to the plate and deliver a fair deal to pharmacy in England, and for the devolved administrations, which will then safeguard the continuation of excellent patient care,” said Rees.

“We desperately want to work with Wes Streeting, (Secretary of State for Health and Social Care) and the new government to unleash the vast potential of pharmacies to deliver the better health in the community that we all want.

“But, despite big settlements for junior doctors and train drivers since the election, there is no sign, as yet, of an end to the chronic real terms cuts that is literally driving dedicated healthcare professionals in pharmacies out of business.”

Rees explained the impact of the Pharmacy First scheme (launched in January) has led to over a million patient consultations, showing the greater role pharmacists can play in the health service.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told Eastern Eye: “This government inherited a broken NHS where pharmacies have been neglected  or years. Pharmacies are key to  making healthcare fit for the  future as we shift the focus of  the NHS out of hospitals and into the community.