The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) today (May 30) announced that it has formally rebranded as Community Pharmacy England (CPE).
The move, expected last month, is part of a wide-ranging programme of work in line with the Review Steering Group’s (RSG) proposals to overhaul pharmacy representation in England.
Read more: PSNC to rebrand as Community Pharmacy England in April 2023
CPE said that its new name “more clearly reflects our purpose and our strengthened commitment to championing community pharmacies and engaging with the sector”.
It added that it will also implement a “new engagement and communications strategy to open up a better dialogue with pharmacy owners” as part of the changes.
“Powerful voice”
“Community pharmacies are under immense pressures and need a strong and powerful voice to represent them to the government and the NHS”, CPE said.
It added that the new branding, shaped by pharmacy owners, local pharmaceutical committees (LPCs) and branding experts, is designed to be “more impactful and authoritative” and “to help community pharmacy to be taken even more seriously right up to the highest levels”.
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And it said that it will share more “regular updates” from its chief executive as well as other pharmacy owner committee members as part of a “new commitment” to engage better with the sector.
The negotiator will also seek feedback to inform its committee meetings, provide feedback from those meetings and pursue a “clear focus on unity” - including by providing LPCs with their own branding template - it added.
“Little to do with pretty colours”
CPE chief executive Janet Morrison said that the organisation has “been working to turn ourselves into a stronger representative body” and that the rebranding is a “positive step forwards in that process”.
“You have told us that you want a stronger, more authoritative body that you feel closer to, and that is what we are trying to achieve,” she added.
Read more: Contractors vote to push through pharmacy representation overhaul
“It has little to do with logos or pretty colours – those matter, because if you want authority and credibility you need to look the part – but without wider changes in culture and strategy, which we are fully committed to and already embarking on, they mean little”, Ms Morrison said.
The new name will stand the negotiator “in good stead to keep influencing” those it needs to including ministers, the NHS and the public as it works on negotiations on the primary care recovery plan and the publication of a “wider vision for the sector”, she added.
CPE hopes pharmacy teams will see the rebrand as a “very real attempt” to follow its goals to “listen more”, tell members more, represent them “more strongly”, “fight [their] corner” and achieve the outcomes they “need and deserve”, she said.
Transforming pharmacy representation
It follows the negotiator’s launch of the Transforming Pharmacy Representation (TAPR) programme in July, which it established to make the recommendations from the RSG a reality.
TAPR aims to meet the 37 proposals set out by the RSG in April last year on how the negotiator and LPCs should best respond to the recommendations outlined in the Wright Review.
This was an independent report that advocated a dramatic overhaul of community pharmacy contractor representation in 2020.
One of the RSG’s key recommendations involved rebranding PSNC as Community Pharmacy England, as well as rebranding LPCs.
21 of the RSG’s recommendations – which contractors voted to push through in June last year – relate to CPE, 10 relate to CPE and LPCs jointly and six to LPCs alone.