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A spokesperson for the University of Suffolk has confirmed that it is seeking to establish a school of pharmacy.
In response to an enquiry from The Pharmaceutical Journal, a spokesperson for the university said that, subject to accreditation, the first student intake for the new MPharm course would be in autumn 2026.
“We are in the early stages of seeking to develop a pharmacy degree, working through the seven-stage accreditation process with the General Pharmaceutical Council,” they added.
NHS England’s ‘Long-term workforce plan’, published in June 2023, said that workforce plans would need an increase in the annual number of pharmacy students to almost 5,000 by 2031.
“To support this level of growth, we will expand training places for pharmacists by 29% to around 4,300 by 2028/2029, starting with initial growth in 2026/2027 when places will increase by 15%,” the plan said.
In a meeting report published on 1 July 2024, the Pharmacy Schools Council (PhSC) said that four new schools of pharmacy — the University of Leicester, the University of Bath at the University of Plymouth, Teesside University and Bangor University — would be joining the PhSC from 1 August 2024.
In September 2024, a spokesperson for the PhSC told The Pharmaceutical Journal that it was aware that the University of Suffolk had expressed interest in establishing a pharmacy school, but that the PhSC was not “formally aware” of interest from any other universities.
In October 2024, the University of Bath said that 26 students had started their pharmacy studies on sites at the University of Plymouth.
A press release said that the MPharm course was “the same course that is delivered at Bath but delivered at the University of Plymouth”.
In August 2024, the PhSC said that while it welcomed the growth in pharmacy student numbers, pharmacy heads of school had concerns about being able to recruit enough staff to run these new courses.
It warned that schools were competing with the NHS around filling teacher–practitioner roles and said it was “formally raising our concerns about the currently uncontrolled increase in schools of pharmacy in the UK without a commensurate investment from the NHS in any of the home nations in training at undergraduate level”.
