Pharmacy First and the Year Ahead: Pharmacy Owner Views Sought

Community pharmacy owners are being asked to share their views on preparations for Pharmacy First, ahead of the next full Community Pharmacy England Committee meeting at the end of January.

This committee meeting comes at a pivotal moment as the new national Pharmacy First service is due to launch against a backdrop of consolidations and closures across the sector. Our Committee of pharmacy owners are only too aware of the extreme challenges all pharmacies are continuing to face, and our CEO has been clear that the Pharmacy First investment is not the panacea for pharmacy’s funding woes (see Janet Morrison’s End of Year Message). We are all beginning the year with a continued focus on improving the outlook for community pharmacy and a renewed vigour to make things better for the sector.

The Committee will reconvene to review progress on negotiations and other important topics, looking particularly at Pharmacy First implementation, funding, the 2024/25 CPCF (on which we hope negotiations will commence soon) and the future strategy for Community Pharmacy England. This work is being shaped by the recently published Vision for Community Pharmacy.

Pharmacy owners can directly input into the Committee’s discussions via a short poll:

January 2024 Committee Opinion Poll (for independents and non-CCA multiples only)

Note, we are also sending the survey directly to the head offices of CCA multiples over the next week, so this does not require action at branch level.

As well as being discussed at January’s Committee Meeting, the results of these polls and the outcomes of the meeting will be reported back to the sector afterwards. Beyond this, your answers will be used to feed into our ongoing work to press for an uplift to core funding, adding to our evidence base of what pharmacy owners are experiencing. This and future surveys will also increase the amount of data we have for use in our campaigning and influencing work.

Seeking your input more often is part of  wider changes in how we work and influence on your behalf. We’re working to build stronger relationships with pharmacy owners by improving how we engage with the sector and listening to pharmacy’s views better.

We hope that as many of you as possible will share your thoughts with us ahead of our upcoming meeting – this is your chance to feed directly into the Committee.

Survey for January’s Meeting

Our topical polling consists of mostly multiple-choice questions, and should take just 10 or so minutes to complete.

For our next meeting, we are keen to hear your thoughts about the new Pharmacy First service and how preparations for it are going, as well as the outlook for your business as we enter 2024. We are also continuing to track the financial pressures on your pharmacies.

Please complete the survey here:

January 2024 Committee Opinion Poll

Please note:

• This survey link is for independents and non-CCA multiples only (as we are sending the survey directly to CCA multiples’ head offices).
• Respondents should have their ODS or POC codes ready and please type these in correctly to help with our analysis.

View a copy of the poll questions

Note, this survey is for community pharmacy owners only. The survey will close at 11.59pm on Sunday 21st January to allow time for our Committee to review all the feedback ahead of their meeting.