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The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) will hold its first ever ballot of members on whether to take action that would lead its member pharmacies to open only for their minimum contracted hours.
Announcing the ballot on 19 September 2024, the NPA — which represents 6,000 community pharmacies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — said it will send out a formal ballot to members “within days” to ask if they will “reduce services and put NHS leaders on notice that they will cut their hours to contract minimums and withdraw free deliveries or free medicine dispensing packs if the financial situation for pharmacies does not improve”.
“The ballot will be open for responses for six weeks and any action supported by a majority of pharmacies could take place before Christmas,” the statement said.
It will also ask pharmacies if they will boycott data collection beyond what is required in their contract and consider serving notice on a range of locally contracted services, negotiated directly with local authorities.
The result of any ballot will only be advisory for members because the NPA is not a trade union.
In a statement, the NPA said: “Most pharmacies are contracted to open for a minimum of 40 hours a week but the majority open for longer to offer out of hours or weekend services.
“Patient safety could be compromised if the current level of pharmacy closures and workload pressures continue because of a 40% real-terms funding cut over the past ten years.”
While the ‘Community pharmacy contractual framework for 2019/2020 to 2023/2024’ expired in April 2024, the NPA said “no funding offer for this year has been made public and no discussions have been opened on a longer term settlement for the pharmacy sector”.
As a result, the membership body said it was calling for a “£1.3bn funding increase in England to plug the financial blockhole facing community pharmacies”.
Paul Rees, chief executive of the NPA, said: “It pains us to take this step but pharmacies are being pushed to the brink by a decade of real-terms cuts that has slashed 40% from their funding.
“Pharmacies are routinely required to dispense NHS medicines at a loss, 1,500 have been forced to close in the past decade, while others have had to cut hours to try and make ends meet. That is not acceptable and is hitting patients hard.
“We desperately want to work with [health and social care secretary] Wes Streeting and the new government to unleash the vast potential of pharmacies to deliver the better health in the community that we all want,” he added.
“But despite big settlements for junior doctors and train drivers since the election there is no sign — as yet — of an end to the chronic real-terms cuts that is literally driving dedicated healthcare professionals in pharmacies out of business.”
Janet Morrison, chief executive of Community Pharmacy England (CPE), said: “Like everyone in the sector, we are in favour of anything that helps to make this case, and we have been clear about the situation in all of our meetings with and submissions to the new government and the NHS.
“CPE discusses tactics and positioning on an ongoing basis with regard to what will best support negotiations: we will be interested to hear about the outcomes of this ballot to inform those considerations.”
Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA), said: “Community pharmacy cannot be expected to deliver more and more workload within an ever-shrinking funding pot.
“It’s clear that community pharmacies can help to solve so many of the issues identified in Lord Darzi’s investigation into the NHS but can only do so with urgent investment. Without additional funding we are concerned that patient’s access to vital medicines and the NHS services they have come to rely on will deteriorate and further pharmacy closures will be inevitable.”
Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, said: “It is disappointing that the NPA feels it has to take this action. The last thing our members want is more industrial action across the health system, which is likely to pile more pressure on to already overstretched services.
“Pharmacies working to rule at the same time as collective action by GPs could leave patients struggling to access the services they need and result in more people turning to already busy A&E departments for help.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “This government inherited a broken NHS where pharmacies have been neglected for years.
“Pharmacies are key to making healthcare fit for the future as we shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into the community. We will make better use of pharmacists’ skills, including accelerating the roll out of independent prescribing to improve access to care.”
