Learn more about community pharmacy

Published on: 5th June 2015 | Updated on: 15th March 2022

Community pharmacies are healthcare providers located at the heart of communities, close to where people live, work and shop. The network of over 11,000 pharmacies across England provide a wide range of services beyond their core dispensing service.

About Community Pharmacy
Here you can find a brief guide to how community pharmacy operates.

The Pharmacy Contract
This section of our website outlines the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework.
Alternatively, you could read our summary here.

Services and Commissioning
Community pharmacies provide a wide range of services commissioned by NHS England as part of the NHS Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF). All pharmacies provide Essential services and all pharmacies can choose to provide Advanced services.

Additionally, local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups can commission services from community pharmacies to meet the needs for their local population. A wide range of public health focussed services are already provided by community pharmacies across England. Find out more:

Detailed information on locally commissioned services

Community Pharmacy England local government leaflet – What can pharmacy do for your local community?

The community pharmacy offer for improving the public’s health (LGA, March 2016)
This briefing, created by the Local Government Association (LGA), is intended to be a guide for local government and health and wellbeing boards.

Reducing premature mortality: the role of community pharmacies (Royal Society for Public Health, February 2015)


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For more information on this topic please email comms.team@cpe.org.uk