Will pharmacy get to keep its £215m services budget?

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By Arthur Walsh, editor, P3pharmacy

“It is expected” that pharmacies in England will earn the full whack of funding that has been allocated to Pharmacy First in the current financial year, health minister Stephen Kinnock said in June. Not guaranteed, but expected – he made sure to give government some wiggle room in case it is left with any spare change from the £215m budget for raiding come next April.  

As readers will be all too aware, that’s exactly what has gone on since the service launched. Just £349m of the two-year budget of £645m for Pharmacy First and other services had been spent by the end of March this year, with the rest of the budget hoovered up by NHS England (NHSE) for non-pharmacy operations. 

The National Pharmacy Association described this as a “shocking underspend,” and it’s hard to disagree. And with Kinnock’s statement appearing to contrast the “expected” ambitions to channel all £215m through pharmacy with the “fully guaranteed” core funding envelope of £3.073bn, many will be anxious that the same could be repeated this year. 

Speaking in the House of Commons recently, Kinnock acknowledged that the take-up of Pharmacy First is still “not what we would like it to be”.

The Honourable Member for Aberafan Maesteg made optimistic noises about new remuneration arrangements, efforts to improve referral systems and a fresh wave of public awareness messaging, all of which he claimed would help drive more eligible patients to pharmacies and “ensure levels of activity that will see this funding fully utilised” in 2025-26. 

That all sounds fine. But will it be a tall order to achieve that in the next nine months? We’ve heard nothing yet on a new advertising campaign, and from anecdotal reports it seems many of the GPs who were reluctant to engage with Pharmacy First when it launched have held on to those views.

Not to mention the ‘bundling’ of services over the next several months that could make it harder for many pharmacies to earn their monthly activity payments.  

And it isn’t just Pharmacy First. NHSE recently announced funding for up to 3,300 registered pharmacists to enrol on independent prescribing courses this year but made clear that the budget does not extend to recruiting designated prescribing practitioners (DPPs) to supervise these prospective candidates.

With many hopeful prescribers still struggling to line up a DPP, I wonder how much of that money will be spent too. 

Any failure to ensure these moneys are channelled through pharmacy will have a deleterious effect on pharmacy finances and make it harder to keep the doors open.

Perhaps more importantly, demoralised pharmacy teams will receive it as a clear sign that these funding announcements from politicians are meant to generate national headlines and not intended as a real commitment to the sector’s survival.