Community Pharmacy England Committee Composition

Following the news about the divestment of LloydsPharmacy branches, we have been asked about our Committee’s composition.

Community Pharmacy England’s Committee is made up of 24 representatives from across the community pharmacy sector, and a non-executive chair. It has been a principle of the Committee for some time, that the composition of the Committee should remain 50% Multiple and 50% Independent. This was affirmed last year in the Review Steering Group vote when 88.6% of those voting (6,732 votes) supported the RSG’s proposals.

The Community Pharmacy England Committee unanimously agreed a revised constitution at its Committee meeting last week which also contained the representation proportions for each ‘part’ of the sector. The vote therefore reaffirmed this principle.

The Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) nominates its representatives on the Committee and most recently nominated the Superintendent Pharmacist of Pharmacy2U to become one of its representatives, replacing a Boots Pharmacy representative and thereby keeping the number of CCA representatives on the Committee the same.

As reported in our Committee Meeting Summary Briefing, in September, the Committee took a vote to regularly review its composition, looking at pharmacy ownership data, in line with its election cycle every four years. This is in line with independent governance advice. The vote was 21 for this proposal, 2 against and 1 abstention. The Committee noted the importance of reviewing market share data ahead of the next election cycle in light of the considerable change going on in the market which is likely to continue for some time.

The Committee felt that to continuously amend Committee composition in between election cycles would be both detrimental to continuity and stability in governance, which are vital to cohesive leadership and accountability. However, the Committee can review this or any of its decisions at any time.