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The Government has indicated it ‘expects’ that efforts to boost Pharmacy First referrals from GPs and raise public awareness of the service will lead to the allocated £215m for 2025-26 being “fully utilised” after the previous year’s allocation was massively underspent.

Pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock made the claims in a written response today (June 10) to Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, who had asked what steps health secretary Wes Streeting is taking “to ensure that the full budget available to community pharmacies in 2025-26 is spent on the sector”.

Mr Kinnock first dealt with the core contractual funding of £3.073bn for the financial year, which he described as “fully guaranteed for the sector”.

Coming on to the money allocated for Pharmacy First, the minister said the available funding of “up to £215m” reflects “the growth of the service to date”. 

He commented: “It is expected that changed to the remuneration arrangements, continued work on improving referral systems and promotions to increase public awareness and knowledge around accessing community pharmacy services will ensure levels of activity that will see this funding fully utilised.” 

The minister’s comments – which fall short of an ironclad guarantee this money will be spent on pharmacies – follow the revelation in April that just £349m out of an allocated budget of £645m was spent on Pharmacy First and other services over a two-year period.

Community Pharmacy England estimated that £204m was spent in 2023-24 and £145m in 2024-25, leaving £296m unspent. 

In March this year the National Pharmacy Association criticised the “shocking underspend” of the services budget, with former NPA chair Nick Kaye commenting: “This is not helped by other services informally signposting patients to pharmacies rather than through formal referral mechanisms and a lack of understanding about the minor illness and urgent medicines elements of the service from other health care professionals.”