Pharmacy Owners: Input into our September Committee Meeting

The Community Pharmacy England Committee will have a full meeting in September and we are seeking input from all pharmacy owners ahead of that.

We are continuing to work hard to fight the sector’s corner on key issues such as funding and payments, medicines supply and price concessions, and the logistics of services such as flu vaccination.

Negotiations on the £645m investment into community pharmacy are ongoing, and alongside this we are preparing for the next round of negotiations, after the current Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) arrangements come to an end in March 2024. As part of the Committee’s in-depth exploration of this, we are looking to give pharmacy owners the chance to directly input into those discussions.

We are seeking views via a short poll available at:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NS2SW6G (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 and doesn’t require action at branch level.

As well as being discussed at the September 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 by enhancing 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. This new approach to engagement aims to help us to build stronger relationships with pharmacy owners by improving how we engage with the sector and listening to pharmacy’s views better.

Alongside this we are launching a new regular schedule of events where you can add your input into our work, registration for the first of these (to be held shortly after the September Committee Meeting) is now open:

Register for our September engagement event

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 September’s Meeting

To help make the feedback process easier for busy pharmacy owners, we have developed a series of polls to gauge your thoughts on topical issues. The short survey of mostly multiple-choice questions should take around 10 minutes to complete.

For the September meeting, we are keen to hear your views on potential options for changes to funding distribution, what other funding asks you think we should put to Government, and what changes would be of most help to reduce the operational pressures on your pharmacy. We also repeat our previous survey’s question on ranking financial pressures to track whether any particular issues are getting better or worse, and there’s space to submit questions for us to address in our September engagement event.

Please complete the survey for September here:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NS2SW6G

(for independents and non-CCA multiples only as we are sending the survey directly to CCA multiples)

Note, this survey is for community pharmacy owners and head office representatives only. The survey will close at 11.59pm on Tuesday 29th August to allow time for our Committee to review all the feedback ahead of the meeting.