Community pharmacy in England is faced with confusing leadership from the Department of Health, with messages encouraging pharmacy to grow their impact, but in the light of the announcement of significant cuts of £170 million for 2016/17.

NPA chairman, Ian Strachan, commented on the DH/NHSE announcement: “There is a fundamental contradiction in NHS England’s statement: it calls for community pharmacy to step forward to meet spiralling health challenges, whilst announcing cuts that will severely hamper our ability to deliver.

“The Government and NHSE should expect a very robust challenge to this misinformed set of proposals; they rest upon a questionable evidence base, unbalanced opinion, and ignore the truly transformational opportunities in community pharmacy. Most worrying of all, they imply that pharmacy is just a distribution mechanism for product – rather than a valuable health and social care asset at the heart of communities.

“Taken together, the statement looks like an assault on the very part of the health system that holds the key to solving many of its problems. Patients would be the biggest losers, if the combination of measures proposed in this statement come to pass. “The NPA and our members will not take this lying down. It could be a rocky road ahead, but the NPA will be supporting independents every step of the way.

“The fact that this news was announced publicly just before Christmas, at a particularly busy time for pharmacies, means it is heartless as well as visionless. It shows a lack of concern for a profession that gives its all throughout the year. Many people working in the pharmacy sector will be worried during this festive period about what the future holds”.

Stephen Fishwick, of the NPA, added that the announcement should prompt a “fight” for the principle of community pharmacy: “The government’s assumptions about how efficiencies may be made are really disturbing. The statement is all to do with cost and nothing to do with value. This is about more than money, we see it as a fight to keep the ‘community’ in ‘community pharmacy’.”

“The financials are very troubling for many of our members,” he said.