Wes Mountain/The Pharmaceutical Journal
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s (RPS’s) three national pharmacy boards held a joint meeting on 19 June 2025 at the Macdonald Burlington hotel in Birmingham.
Matters for discussion included changing RPS policy to allow the facilitated sale of P medicines, government proposals on pharmacy supervision, a strategy for health inequalities, and updates on workforce, cancer care, research into women’s health and menopause, followed by constitution and governance.
Present at the meeting were:
- Paul Bennett, chief executive of the RPS;
- Laura Wilson, director for Scotland at the RPS;
- Elen Jones, director of pharmacy at the RPS;
- Karen Baxter, deputy chief executive and managing director at the Pharmaceutical Press;
- Amandeep Doll, head of engagement and professional belonging at the RPS;
- Wing Tang, head of professional standards at the RPS;
- Heidi Wright, English practice and policy lead at the RPS; and
- Kellie King, Scottish Pharmacy Clinical Leadership Fellow.
Apologies were received from Scottish Pharmacy Board (SPB) members Lucy Dixon, Josh Miller, Richard Shearer and Audrey Thompson, and Welsh Pharmacy Board (WPB) member Richard Evans.
Facilitated (open) sale of P medicines
Tang and Wright asked board members to discuss a new position statement and professional guidance on the facilitated self-selection of P medicines in community pharmacy.
At the February 2025 board meetings, all three boards voted in favour of the RPS changing current RPS policy and allowing the facilitated sale of P medicines in certain conditions and with built-in safeguards.
The new position statement and professional guidance had been shared in confidential papers sent to board members ahead of the meeting.
Tang and Wright asked each of the boards to consider these documents, suggest any amendments and agree on final versions.
Tang explained that it was currently draft policy and the RPS were “seeking sign off pending any changes agreed in this meeting”.
Each board was generally supportive of the new materials. Bayo Adegbite, member of the English Pharmacy Board (EPB), asked if the documents could specify that the model is not suitable for all pharmacies — for example, if “following a risk assessment someone says this is not suitable for my tiny pharmacy”.
Ciara Duffy, member of the EPB, said the materials were “very comprehensive” and suggested the addition of a visual flowchart.
Jonathan Burton, chair of the SPB, asked if the boards were comfortable with the wording “supportive” of adoption, or if they wanted to be “more neutral around the general concept but emphasise support of teams who wish to operate in that way”.
Jill Swann, member of the SPB, said: “Our position isn’t that you must [do it]; it is if you are able, and minimise the risks, we will support you.”
Tang said that the wording in both the position statement and guidance received extensive feedback from the community pharmacy Expert Advisory Group and that the advice was to move closer to being supportive.
In a show of hands, the boards voted, with a majority being in support of the position statement and guidance.
Pharmacy supervision
Tang then introduced an item on supervision. He said it was expected that the government would soon publish their response to a consultation on supervision, alongside new legislation.
He outlined the three proposals that would be expected to be set out in legislation and added that there were no changes expected to responsible pharmacist legislation and no remote supervision.
“The RPS is supportive of all three elements of the expected changes and it is part of our workplan — we are working on guidance and preparing to refresh standards in this area,” Tang added.
Tang asked the boards for three things: to re-affirm the RPS’s 2023 policy direction around pharmacy supervision, set out in a consultation response in February 2024, and its 2025/2026 workplan; to affirm the intended audience of RPS professional guidance supporting supervision; and finally to ask if boards were supportive of developing an RPS definition of supervision.
Burton asked for a show of hands to re-affirm the existing 2023 policy and 2025/2026 workplan, to which there was a “clear majority”.
On item two, which concerned RPS guidance, Tang asked who the boards thought the audience should be: RPS members, all pharmacists or all pharmacy professionals?
There was widespread support for the guidance being for all pharmacy teams.
Michael Maguire, member of the EPB, said that with the move to a royal college and focus on patient safety and public benefit, “something this important should go across the board”.
Amina Slimani-Fersia, member of the SPB, said there was a potential safety risk with handing out pre-checked medicines, and the guidance should mitigate that.
“It is difficult to police if it is member only; if they will share it? Make it available to all,” she said.
Laura Fulton, member of the SPB, said she was “sure [the] APTUK [Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK] will do a lot of work, so let’s be clear on what our guidance is wanting to tell”, adding that the RPS should “collaborate and make sure we are not replicating [other work’]”.
In response to a question from Brendon Jiang, member of the EPB and treasurer of the RPS, Tang said the RPS was in active discussions with other bodies, including the APTUK and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland.
Finally, Tang asked if the boards were interested in developing an RPS definition of supervision, based on collaborative work with the pharmacy supervision group.
It is not expected that supervision will be defined in the legislation or by the General Pharmaceutical Council, so there would be a “gap”.
Tang also pointed out that the RPS published a guide in 2005, as the regulator, on what supervision looked like, which was all subject to the pharmacist being interruptible.
It is possible to develop the two pieces of guidance [discussed earlier] without redefining supervision, but it could be challenging, he said.
The boards were generally supportive of a definition. Aled Roberts, member of the WPB, said it was an “opportunity for us to lead”.
Lowri Puw, member of the WPB, noted that the “pharmacy landscape is a long way from 2005; it is now much more service-focused”.
Sue Ladds, member of the EPB, said she was supportive but cautioned the definition should “enable and be supportive of good practice and not overly prohibitive”.
Health inequalities
Doll said that health inequalities were an important part of the vision for all three countries, and it was not a standalone activity but one that “cuts across all our products and services”.
From discussions with the boards in February 2025, Doll said it was felt that a position statement or overarching commitment should be worked on.
She added that there is an opportunity to work with other royal colleges and make sure pharmacists are positioned as leaders at a local level. She also suggested taking a similar approach to that used for inclusion and diversity work: a broad strategy with focused campaigns on topics.
A position statement would be worked on over the next two years, as well as a health inequalities hub page.
Tase Oputu, chair of the EPB, asked if “we can incorporate some thinking about how to do this collaboratively”, noting that “we have a huge impact in this area but we are part of a really big puzzle”.
Eleri Schiavone, member of the WPB, said that “Wales is going to be the first Marmot nation in GB”, which shows the “success of a project being rolled out across Wales, supported by the Welsh government”.
Geraldine McCaffrey, chair of the WPB, said that “a literature review is a good place to start initially”, and the role of other sectors should not be overlooked.
Policy workforce update
Fiona McIntyre, policy and practice lead at RPS Scotland, said that workforce was a fundamental part of the Society’s policy activity.
Influencing factors included the long-term plan in England, the national workforce forum in Scotland and the strategic pharmacy workforce plan in Wales, as well as the work of the UK Pharmacy Professional Leadership Advisory Board.
The boards were asked what they would like to see in year one of this work.
Duffy said that in relation to credentialing, the Society should be looking at non-patient facing roles, noting that “lots of people in senior positions are not patient facing, as well as in industry — all pharmacy is clinical, whatever area you are working in”.
Richard Strang, member of the SPB, said that “our focus should be how we become more relevant to community pharmacy and how can [credentialling] be achieved by a larger number of people”.
Danny Bartlett, member of the EPB, said that the “ten-year health plan will be important, pharmacists will look at it — guidance and leadership are needed from us about how pharmacists can feed into that”.
Policy update on cancer care
Heidi Wright said that discussions had been held with the British Oncology Pharmacy Association (BOPA), and the RPS and BOPA were keen to work together on cancer care.
Aspects of work discussed included how to maximise the use of pharmacy teams to get the best outcomes for patients, and that early diagnosis and community pharmacy was a potential area to explore.
It had also been noted that a shortage of oncology pharmacists was an issue, and aseptics have issues around pharmacist recruitment and retention.
The National Cancer Plan for England is expected to be published in the next few months, Wright said, adding that the RPS was feeding into the drafts.
Catriona Sinclair, member of the SPB, suggested a review of outcomes from the Daffodil Standards, to which Alwyn Fortune, policy and engagement lead at RPS Wales, said that this was part of the next phase of work.
Women’s health update
Kellie King updated the boards on her research into women’s health and menopause, which involved scoping work for an RPS women’s health project and looking at national women’s health strategies.
According to interim findings, only 23% of women felt prepared for menopause, King said.
King added that “inconsistent; confusing; conflicting” were the top three words that women used to describe menopause advice from healthcare professionals. In addition, there is an information gap, people felt.
Essential themes in her interim analysis, King said, were that there is interest in pharmacists being able to prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT) directly; frustration over outdated or inconsistent advice; and a lack of awareness that pharmacists can offer menopause advice.
King said that short-term actions to improve women’s health around menopause could include improved symptom awareness and the introduction of a peri-menopause symptom checker.
Longer-term actions could include prescribing skills and mentoring, King added.
King said that she can send recommendations to the boards around amendments to the current policy statement on women’s health, which was published in 2021.
Roberts said that “in Wales we have done good community pharmacy work in contraception — HRT seems like a sensible next step” but added that funding needs to follow.
Constitution and governance update
Finally, Baxter gave an update on where the Society was with the move to a royal college, noting that the first milestone — a “yes” vote — had been achieved since the previous meeting.
Baxter said the Society was modelling how the relationship between the Pharmaceutical Press publishing subsidiary and the charity will work, noting that it is required that the subsidiary operates at arms-length from the charity.
As a charity, Baxter said, there are “a lot of regulations we need to adhere to” and that a study so far “shows that we operate in way that is already amenable”.
- The next Scottish Pharmacy Board meeting will be held on 17–18 September 2025
- The next English Pharmacy Board meeting will be held on 23–24 September 2025
- The next Wales Pharmacy Board meeting will be held on 25–26 September 2025
