Share your opinions on Winter Pressures: Pharmacy Owner Views Sought
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Community pharmacy owners are being asked to share their views and concerns as we head into winter, as well as any further feedback they have, before the next full Community Pharmacy England Committee meeting in November.
This winter will be a critical time for the sector as community pharmacy owners desperately need answers about their future. Just last week Community Pharmacy England CEO Janet Morrison warned that community pharmacy is on the brink of a ‘house of cards’ collapse at the Pharmacy Show. At the time of writing, we are awaiting the call to re-commence the 2024/25 Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) negotiations, but remain optimistic that things will have progressed by the time of the committee meeting.
As Community Pharmacy England is a Committee of pharmacy owners, they are feeling the weight of the immense financial and operational pressures just as intensely as you. The Negotiating Team is clear that the top priority in negotiations is to secure a significant uplift, but the trickier part comes in how this will best reach individual pharmacy businesses.
As well as the 2024/25 negotiations, in November Committee Members will also discuss other pressing issues such as monitoring activity for NHS flu vaccinations and Pharmacist First – especially following the introduction of amended monthly payment thresholds. This meeting is also traditionally when the Committee considers Community Pharmacy England’s workplans for the following financial year (2025/26).
To help inform the Committee’s discussions, we are keen to hear how concerned you are about your pharmacy business going into this winter and what impact that may have. We are also continuing to track the intensity of various financial pressures on your pharmacies. Your views will be fed into our ongoing work, including to press for funding uplifts and other improvements for the sector through our strategic influencing programme.
You can directly input into the Committee’s discussions via this short poll:
November 2024 Committee Opinion Poll (for independent and non-CCA multiples only)
View a copy of the poll questions
The survey will close at 11.59pm on Monday 4th November to allow time for Committee Members to review all the feedback ahead of their meeting. Note, this survey is for community pharmacy owners only and CCA multiple branches do not need to respond as the survey is being sent to their head offices.
As well as being considered during November’s Committee Meeting, your answers will be used to raise awareness of the immense pressures on pharmacies, along with case studies (e.g. the recent piece featured on BBC’s The One Show), and the findings will also be reported back to the sector.
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.
You can see the results from the previous opinion polls in the links below:
