The NPA is not “in any mood to back down or U-turn”, the body’s chair yesterday (April 3) said during an exclusive interview with C+D.
The comment comes after Community Pharmacy England (CPE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) this week (March 31) announced the 2025/26 pharmacy contract, which will see the sector receive an extra £481m on 2023/24 figures – an 18.6% rise.
The news prompted the NPA to pause its plans to recommend pharmacy collective action from April 1 in protest against “unsustainable” funding while it “consults” its members.
Read more: New contract: NPA to ‘consult’ members on collective action
“I definitely wouldn’t be thinking about a U-turn,” Nick Kaye yesterday told C+D when pressed on plans for collective action, adding that “at the minute, it’s paused”.
He stressed that the five tests for a funding deal set out by the NPA in January “were right” – “[contractors] need a roadmap to the economic review, they need a release of funding in April, and there needs to be an uplift”.
Read more: All the headlines: Community pharmacy funding deal
“The contractors on the ground want those three things,” he added.
“I don’t think the NPA board is in any mood to back down or U-turn...you have to now continue to apply pressure in the right way,” he said.
The board is set to make its decision on collective action next week, Kaye told C+D.
“No cash for April”
Reflecting on the long-awaited contract, Kaye stressed that “obviously the gap to the economic review is huge”.
“No cash for April is a real problem,” he said, adding that contractors will have to “carry the national insurance costs and the living wage costs and they’re not going to have any more money until June”.
Read more: Collective action! Pharmacies to cut hours and services from April 1
“So from April to June they’re in a worse place than they are now, which is really hard,” he told C+D.
“The real anger we’re hearing is that nothing until June is a real problem,” he said. “You have to recognise it’s a step up, but by the time you take off all the national insurance and all that, it’s not as big a step as they think.”
Collective action
In November, 99% of polled English NPA members voted to take collective action to limit pharmacy services unless funding was improved.
But 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 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 said that the new funding deal “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
