The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) today (March 31) said that it would “look carefully at the detail” of the new community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF) funding deal to consider whether it will still recommend collective action.
NPA chair Nick Kaye said that “no-one wants to reduce services through protest action”.
“We’ll look carefully at the detail and consult our members who are facing substantial cost increases from April 1 to understand what this means for the future of their services so we can recommend next steps,” he added.
Read more: Collective action! Pharmacies to cut hours and services from April 1
Earlier this month, the NPA urged its 6,000 members “to start the process from April 1 of reducing opening hours and services, if no new and sufficient funding is delivered” as part of historic collective action.
The call was prompted in part by “a swathe of new costs due to hit pharmacies from the start of next month”, including a hike in National Insurance contributions (NICs).
But following today’s announcement of a retrospective 4% funding increase for 2024/25 to £2.698 billion and another 14% increase to £3.073bn for 2025/26, it remains unclear whether the collective action will go ahead.
Collective action
In November, 99% of polled English NPA members voted to take collective action to limit pharmacy services unless funding was improved.
And at the time, the membership body told C+D that despite previously planning to act on members’ votes before Christmas, it would give the government “time to digest” the vote and wait until January to make any recommendations on collective action.
Read more: BREAKING: New 2025 CPCF funding deal - uplift revealed
If protest action does go ahead – which could begin as soon as tomorrow – it may include:
- Serving notice on opening hours above the minimum required by their contract, which 98% of respondents said at the time they would be willing to do
- Withdrawing from locally commissioned services, which 96% agreed to
- Withdrawing from making free home deliveries of medicines that are not funded, which 93% agreed to
- Refusing to co-operate with certain data requests above those required for patient safety and contractual minimums, which 99% agreed to
Read more: Kinnock: Collective action is ‘premature, unnecessary and detrimental’
Meanwhile, pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock commented on the long-awaited new funding deal – which represents an 18.6%, or £481 million, increase on 2023/2024 sector funds – saying that these measures “will go a long way to...help get the sector back onto an even keel”.
It comes after the economic analysis of the community pharmacy sector, finally published last week, revealed that around half of pharmacies in England did not turn a profit last year, 99% are “not sustainable in the long-run” and 78% are “unsustainable in the short-run”.
Check the C+D site for the latest coverage on this developing story
