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After several months of waiting, the 2026-27 contract has landed. It doesn’t come close to plugging the £2bn funding gap, but it does add some £340m to the sector’s annual settlement.   

The prescribing element of the new contractual framework is what Labour led with in its announcement to the public. This is perhaps understandable, given that a bells-and-whistles IP service was a manifesto commitment on which the party wishes to be seen as making headway.

But there is a notable absence of new money expressly dedicated to building the service, other than monthly £525 fees for those who sign up to deliver prescribing-led Pharmacy First consultations from the autumn.

Community Pharmacy England went so far as to say it is up to contractors to decide for themselves whether it’s even worth the faff of offering those consultations – a far cry from the fanfare that accompanied the Pharmacy First launch.

Pharmacist prescribing risks being “set up to fail” under present conditions, the negotiator warned.

It’s hard to disagree. And the (extremely conservative) plans for IP bolt-ons to Pharmacy First and the contraception service appear to be an admission from Government itself that the concept is less than oven-ready.

We still don’t know the scope of what will be eventually commissioned, or even who will be doing the commissioning. Will it be led by the all-powerful Integrated Care Boards of the future, or decided centrally to ensure a degree of consistency?

From the looks of things, answers to thorny questions like these could still be some years off.

That is unfortunate, seeing as the first cohort of IP-qualified graduate pharmacists will be taking up their posts from September.

Analysis of NHS England’s annual workforce report suggests there are almost 3,000 fewer full-time equivalent pharmacists working in the community sector now than there were in 2021.

If the pharmacists of the future are met with continued uncertainty and the threat of career stagnation, that exodus could worsen still.