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Community pharmacists should be given greater flexibility to substitute medicines during shortages, make changes to medicines to support adherence, or change or deprescribe medicines to align with guidelines, the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) has urged as part of a “prospectus” for community pharmacy.
The CCA 2025 prospectus, published to coincide with the organisation’s conference in London on 11 September 2025, also called for an expansion of Pharmacy First as a walk-in service with a larger range of conditions, moving to a prescribing service over time.
It also proposes that all NHS vaccination programmes, a wrap-around weight-loss service and ‘walk-in’ smoking cessation service should be commissioned from community pharmacies.
The CCA suggested that these proposals together could free up 51 million GP appointments each year.
This includes an estimated 2.5 million consultations for lower back pain, 1 million for eye infections, 2 million for chest infections, 1.8 million for simple acne and 1.3 million for headache and migraine, all through an expanded Pharmacy First scheme, it said.
At least 4.5 million consultations could be delivered for hypertension treatment initiation, follow-up consultations and subsequent yearly reviews, the prospectus added.
The CCA also estimated that community pharmacy could provide 12.8 million consultations for weight-loss services, including three initiation/medicine review and adjustment consultations, plus three to six follow-ups per patient.
“NICE estimates 3.4 million patients in England will be eligible for [weight-loss] treatment in the future. Private healthcare activity suggests demand may be even higher. Primary care does not have the capacity to meet that demand at present,” the CCA prospectus noted.
However, Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the CCA, said in his foreword: “Realising this vision will require bold action from policymakers and commissioners.
“Investment in the sector, through ambitious commissioning and in clinical infrastructure, workforce development and digital integration are all essential enablers, as is regulatory reform.”
Amandeep Doll, director for England at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, commented: “Pharmacists are essential to delivering the ten-year health plan, which must be backed by sustainable funding and workforce support.
“Strong pharmacy leadership across the system is vital to developing new services and maximising resources. As medicines are fundamental to patient care, pharmacists must be fully included in the government’s workforce planning alongside other healthcare professions.”
In particular, Doll noted that “expanding patient access to Pharmacy First will play a key role in delivering the government’s ambition to treat more people closer to home”.
“With a growing workforce of pharmacist prescribers, making greater use of their skills will enable pharmacists to manage complete episodes of care, improving patient experience and boosting NHS productivity.”
She also said that enabling pharmacists to initiate treatment directly “could reduce pressures on GP and the risk of strokes and heart attacks”.
“If successful, this model could extend to other common long-term conditions, improving access to care, health outcomes and addressing health inequalities.”
“Expanding pharmacists’ role in vaccinations would increase capacity, improve uptake in deprived areas, help address vaccine hesitancy and strengthen the UK’s resilience against future outbreaks,” Doll added.
The government is currently consulting on proposed changes to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 that would enable pharmacies to offer all vaccinations against a vaccine-preventable disease.
Doll added that pharmacist-led weight-loss services “would provide safe, accessible support within structured NHS pathways, combining medicines with appropriate lifestyle advice”, while “a national walk-in smoking cessation service in pharmacists could help hundreds of thousands more people to quit each year, building on the trust communities already place in pharmacies”.
Leyla Hannbeck, chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) said: “These are all the points IPA has been saying for more than a year and we have been discussing with officials and members of Parliament, and the Treasury to this effect.”
The IPA’s 2025 prospectus, published in May 2025, calls for an expansion of Pharmacy First and making it “a pull service rather than a push service”, the commissioning of vaccinations through community pharmacies, and for community pharmacies to play a role in tackling cardiovascular disease.
“But all this requires adequate core funding, and unless pharmacy gets fair funding and a level playing field, it will be very difficult for community pharmacies to continue delivering patient care and their much needed services in their communities,” Hannbeck told The Pharmaceutical Journal.
