Provision of RSV and Pertussis vacs from May 2025
Update: The deadline for expression of interest has been extended to 5:00PM on Monday 31st March 2025.
NHS England has published an invitation to tender (ITT) inviting community pharmacy owners interested in providing a Community Pharmacy Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Pertussis Vaccination Enhanced Service.
Announcement of the tender, follows on from the September 2024 introduction of the RSV vaccination programme in general practice and NHS trusts and the initial commissioning of up to 50 early adopter community pharmacy sites to also provide RSV vaccinations in the East of England.
The publication marks the starting process to commission a new National Enhanced Service from community pharmacies to address local population needs. This service will be supplemental to the core offer through general practice or NHS Trusts.
The current invitation to tender seeks expressions of interest from pharmacy owners wishing to provide the service in three ICBs within the Midlands region, with up to 66 pharmacies able to participate:
- NHS Black Country ICB (from designated postcode areas);
- NHS Leicester, Leicestershire, & Rutland ICB (from designated postcode areas); and
- NHS Birmingham and Solihull ICB (from designated locality areas).
Pharmacy owners wishing to be considered must respond to the ITT by 5:00PM on Monday 31st March 2025.
Further details on the service, including the service specification and associated patient group directions will be published by NHS England in due course.
Commenting on the publication of the tenders, Alastair Buxton, Director of NHS Services at Community Pharmacy England said:
“The commissioning of further pharmacies to provide RSV and pertussis vaccinations, building on the great work of the early adopter pharmacies in the East of England, is a welcome and strategically significant development.
“We believe further commissioning of pharmacies to provide NHS vaccination programmes can help address falling vaccine coverage, particularly in relation to less well served groups of the population. Our agreement with NHS England to use a National Enhanced Service to commission a vaccination service in response to population needs is really positive news and is an approach we want to see repeated in the future. We believe such an approach can best support ICBs to easily commission community pharmacies to help address their populations’ unmet vaccination needs once ICBs take on delegated responsibility for vaccination commissioning in April 2026.”
