Children’s Flu Vac Advanced service to be launched in October
Following negotiations with NHS England, we have agreed to the introduction of a one-season trial of a new flu vaccination service for children aged 2-3 years.
The service will be commissioned as an Advanced service and pharmacies that choose to provide the service will be able to commence vaccinating eligible children from 1st October 2025.
The commissioning of the service is seeking to increase uptake of the vaccine in this age group, who are ordinarily offered vaccination via their general practice; older children are offered vaccination at school.
The majority of eligible children will be vaccinated with Live attenuated influenza vaccine nasal spray suspension (LAIV) which will be supplied to pharmacies from centrally procured stock.
Pharmacy owners will be paid £9.58 for each vaccine administered; this fee is funded from NHS vaccination budgets, not from the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework global sum.
Further information on the new service can be found in the service specification that has been published by NHS England.
Download the service specification
Pharmacy owners that choose to sign up to provide the service will be able to do so via the NHSBSA’s MYS portal from 1st August 2025. In order to receive vaccine ahead of the start of the service on 1st October 2025, pharmacy owners will need to register on MYS by 23:59 on 31st August 2025. Later registration will be possible, but the provision of the centrally procured vaccine will be received after the starting date for the service.
Commenting on the commissioning of the new service, Alastair Buxton, Director of NHS Services at Community Pharmacy England said:
“The commissioning of this new vaccination service from community pharmacies is fully aligned with NHS England’s vaccination strategy, the Government’s recently published 10 Year Plan for Health and the community pharmacy sector’s strong desire to provide more NHS vaccination programmes.
“Community Pharmacy England was pleased to be able to agree this new Advanced service as a trial for one season, and we are confident that pharmacy teams will be able to increase vaccination rates by providing a convenient and accessible service to parents and their eligible children.
“It represents another strategically important step towards community pharmacies being able to support the delivery of all NHS vaccination programmes, However, pharmacy owners will need to reflect on the size of the eligible cohort of children before they decide to opt to provide the service.”
Last season, the eligible cohort of children was around 1.2 million and just over 40% of children were vaccinated by general practices.
