The government has “confirmed that it is introducing hub-and-spoke dispensing model one and changes to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 will be made in the coming weeks”, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) last week (March 28) announced.
The news comes after a second consultation on hub-and-spoke dispensing between community pharmacy businesses in 2022.
Read more: Government set to ‘introduce’ hub-and-spoke legislation in 2025
The proposals sought views on two models:
- Model one, in which a patient presents a prescription to the spoke pharmacy. The pharmacy sends it to the hub, which prepares and assembles the medicines. These are sent back to the spoke, which supplies them to the patient.
- Model two, the same as above, but the hub sends the medicines directly to the patient’s home rather than to the retail pharmacy.
Pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock last week said that he was “pleased to confirm that [consultation] responses were overwhelmingly positive in support of model one of hub-and-spoke, which we will be going with”.
“Coming weeks”
Kinnock announced that the government intends to “lay draft secondary legislation” that would allow the model “in the coming weeks”.
Currently, hub-and-spoke dispensing is only permitted between pharmacies within the same legal entity – meaning smaller independent pharmacies have been excluded from it.
Read more: Promised hub-and-spoke legislation delayed indefinitely
Kinnock added that the regulations are set “to come into force later this year”.
It remains unclear exactly when pharmacies will be able to make use of the reforms.
Hub-and-running
The news comes amid a long-awaited new funding deal, which represents an 18.6%, or £481 million, increase on 2023/2024 sector funds.
Meanwhile in December, pharmacist MP Sadik Al-Hassan said that hub-and-spoke legislation is the “only” way to expand pharmacy capacity in Parliament.
Read more: BREAKING: New 2025 CPCF funding deal - uplift revealed
He stressed that ministers should focus on “finally implementing the hub-and-spoke legislation, which was inexplicably shelved in September without warning or explanation”.
In the autumn, the government indefinitely delayed changes to the legal status of hub-and-spoke arrangements that were set to come into force this month.
At the time, it said that it was “not in a position to implement these proposals” by the beginning of 2025.
Read more: We just bought 45 pharmacies - now we have an urgent need for Hub and Spoke
The previous government dithered on publishing its hub-and-spoke response for more than two years after launching a consultation in March 2022, after a previous consultation on the model in 2016.
At the time, feedback was mixed – with CPE claiming that the proposals were “more likely to add cost to the community pharmacy sector”.
