Which commissioner?
Published on: 14th April 2014 | Updated on: 8th December 2025
Healthcare commissioning is the process by which the health needs of a population are assessed, the responsibility is taken for ensuring that appropriate services are available to meet these needs, and the accountability for the associated health outcomes is established.
Since April 2013 a number of commissioners have had a role in commissioning services from community pharmacies. The following general rules apply, but there are grey areas which may result in local variation on which commissioner takes a lead in commissioning a service.
Click on a heading below for more information.
Regional NHS England teams can commission Enhanced services under the NHS Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF).
Enhanced Services are those pharmaceutical services that are listed in The Pharmaceutical Services (Advanced and Enhanced Services) (England) Directions 2013, as amended. Other commissioners may choose to commission some of these Enhanced Services from community pharmacies, but they would be classed as locally commissioned services and not Enhanced Services.
NHS England Pharmacy Enhanced Services Q&A (April 2014)
Local authorities (LA) have responsibility for commissioning a wide range of services, including most public health services and social care services. The following public health services provided by community pharmacies would be commissioned by local authorities:
- Supervised consumption of substance use medicines;
- Needle and syringe programme;
- NHS Health Check;
- EHC and contraceptive services*;
- Sexual health screening services;
- Stop smoking;
- Chlamydia testing and treatment;
- Weight management; and
- Alcohol screening and brief interventions.
* The nationally commissioned Pharmacy Contraception Service (PCS) commenced on 24th April 2023, allowing the on-going supply of oral contraception (OC) from community pharmacies. From 1st December 2023, the service expanded to include both initiation and on-going supply of OC and from 29th October 2025 it further expanded to include the supply of emergency contraception (EC).
LAs will use their own contracts or may use the NHS standard contract to commission services from community pharmacies.
There are a small number of circumstances where a public health service is commissioned by another organisation, e.g. NHS England commissions vaccination services from GPs, community pharmacies and other providers. There may also be circumstances where Integrated Care Boards may wish to be involved in commissioning a public health service, due to the impact the service may have on the development or management of long-term conditions.
The wider services that Integrated Care Boards (ICB) commission include planned hospital care, rehabilitative care, urgent and emergency care (including out-of-hours and accident and emergency services), most community health services, maternity services, mental health and learning disability services.
From community pharmacy, ICBs may wish to commission services such as minor ailments services and palliative care schemes.
For more information on this topic please email services.team@cpe.org.uk
