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The government’s ten-year workforce plan, developed to support its ten-year health plan for England, is expected to be published in June 2026, the deputy chief pharmaceutical officer for England has said.
Speaking at Clinical Pharmacy Congress (CPC) 2026, held at Excel London on 8 and 9 May 2026, Richard Cattell said: “We don’t know what the ten-year workforce plan is going to include … we’re expecting it in June [2026], but we’ll have to see when it comes.”
However, he added that there are “signals” that NHS England, pharmacy employers and educators could take away now, particularly around how “to transform the workforce we’ve got”.
In particular, Cattell highlighted the shift towards neighbourhood working as integrated teams with other healthcare professionals, as well as the need for digital skills.
“People are choosing to work less or to work in a portfolio style… you’ve got to employ more people. You’ve got to be flexible,” he continued.
Cattell said that prescribing pharmacists should be ready to train the next generation of prescribers, adding that “we almost need a professional mandate … we need to make the educator workforce as important as the service delivery workforce”.
In another session held during the CPC 2026, Liz Fidler, senior professional advisor for pharmacy technician practice at NHS England, spoke about the need to support pharmacy technician trainees to become registered.
She described the “drop off the cliff” in the pharmacy technician workforce leaving community pharmacy, adding that NHS England would support trainees in community pharmacy.
Following recent legislative changes — such as supervision legislation in community pharmacy, passed in 2025, which enables pharmacy technicians to do more — Fidler noted work being undertaken by the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK to develop a pharmacy technician scope of practice, that would help the wider team understand what pharmacy technicians can do.
Describing pharmacy technicians as “an autonomous profession”, Fidler said: “We are no longer a task-based profession.”
“That makes some people uncomfortable, but that’s what being registered means. We are accountable for our actions; we are accountable for adhering to our code of practice, to the standards set by our regulator,” she added.
Fidler continued that the organisations hoped to launch the scope of practice around September 2026.
She also said that she was “delighted that the royal college [of pharmacy] has now launched” and that it was an exciting opportunity to talk about how the two professions can work together, “while retaining our own professional identities”.
Read more: ‘PJ view: the forthcoming ten-year workforce plan must be more than ‘numbers’‘
