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Leela Barham explores how community pharmacy’s version of collective bargaining looks to be going on the 2026/2027 Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework

Collective bargaining is a tradition in the UK; in essence, it’s when a trade union negotiates on behalf of its members with an employer on a whole host of issues. Community pharmacy has its own version of this. 

CPE has set out who is involved on their side with the community Pharmacy England Negotiating Team informed by the Community Pharmacy England Committee, “wider” experts on economics, business models or others plus staffers at CPE and Local Pharmaceutical Committee Operations Team. Other parts of the sector can be called upon if there are specific or local input needed. 

The CPE Negotiating Team includes representatives that are drawn from the Company Chemist’s Association (CCA; two reps), a non-CAA multiple (one rep), independents (three reps) alongside CPE staffers (seven). 

That’s a slimmed-down set of people versus the 26 representatives on the CPE committee. The negotiating team is operating as a bargaining team for the entire sector, no small ask. 

The team is not just the people; they come with their own experiences of working within bodies that represent, in some shape or form, the sector. In addition to the CCA, reps include from the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) as well as the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).

CPE Asks

CPE has set out its asks for the CPCF deal for the upcoming financial year following a full committee meeting on 4 and 5 February 2026. CPE said that its top priority is negotiating “a more sustainable CPCF” and added that it also wanted “improved margin delivery, fees, reimbursement”. The committee also discussed refining opening positions and red lines, although, as you’d expect, just what these are wasn’t set out so that it didn’t tip off the other side. 

The trouble with the phrase “a more sustainable CPCF” is that it’s hard to know what it means. Sustainability isn’t about degree – at least in the strict definition of the word, comms seems to take a lot of leeway with language these days – the estimated funding gap for NHS pharmaceutical services was over £2billion according to Frontier Economics in March 2024. 

Hard to imagine CPE could secure funding that would put the sector in a sustainable position. The realistic benchmark is more likely to be whether CPE can secure more than it did in the last negotiation.

CPE has also set out negotiating priorities that include:

·      A plan to close the funding gap, with proper indexation for activity and inflation;

• A roadmap for the future, aligned with 10 Year Health Plan ambitions;
• A margin reset and continued write-off of over-delivery;
• Progress towards the Community Pharmacist Prescribing Service (in so far as this is achievable for the sector within the funding available); and
• Reforms to aid efficiency and reduce red tape.

That’s a lot of asks. Some of these are bound to be there for positioning and then to act as trade-offs for what the Negotiating Team really want.

Unity 

There’s a degree of alignment with what the CPE is saying is its priority and statements from the NPA and the CCA. 

The NPA have called for “a meaningful uplift in funding and anything less than the level required to begin closing the gap will not be acceptable.”

The CCA has also focused on funding, calling for “an uplift in funding to stabilise the network, halt further closures, and ensure patients receive the medicines they need.

Division

Whilst the negotiating committee brings together the different representative bodies for community pharmacy, that hasn’t stopped public statements emerging about their different views. On March 16, two weeks after the negotiations between CPE and the Government opened, the NPA released a statement that called for a cross-sector summary “one more time” to “drive…conversations forward with a view to have a unified sector approach.”

The IPA suggests that they have already tried to develop an outline plan in case of a “sub-standard settlement.” That could include a legal challenge. They also asked for a collaborative working group across the trade bodies. 

Readers will draw their own views, but could it be seen as a failure of the collective bargaining approach via CPE? 

Time is ticking

The negotiations have not been going on for long and the beginning of the new financial year is looming. That leaves little time to achieve unity within the sector, let alone with the Government. Could that allow the Government to divide and conquer?