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Negotiations on the community pharmacy contractual framework will start early in 2025, health secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Speaking at an evidence session held by the Health and Social Care Committee on 18 December 2024, Streeting said that pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock “will be starting that shortly in the new year”.
Streeting was responding to a comment by Gregory Stafford, Conservative MP for Farnham and Bordon, who said that pharmacies were under “great financial pressure”, which he said was in part “down to the fact that negotiations on the contractual framework have not started”.
Streeting said he recognises that “pharmacy is under enormous pressure”, adding that his main focus was on “stabilising the system”.
“We have lost over 1,250 pharmacies since 2017, and we have seen a real-terms cut in funding for community pharmacy of 28% since 2015/2016, so I absolutely recognise those pressures,” he said.
“I am taking that into account when thinking about allocations for the year ahead, and I definitely see, as does Kinnock, a bigger role for community pharmacy as part of the shift from hospital to community.”
In a Parliamentary debate on 17 December 2024, Kinnock said he was “as frustrated as everybody else about the delay” to contract negotiations, which he said happened because “negotiations did not get over the line before the general election”.
Janet Morrison, chief executive of Community Pharmacy England (CPE), said: “I wrote to ministers earlier [in December] to reiterate the very perilous position that the sector is in, and to warn of the serious consequences should the current chronic underfunding of the sector continue.
“Government and the NHS can be in no doubt as to how much — both for community pharmacies, and their patients — is at stake.
“It has been encouraging this week to hear the secretary of state recognising the immense pressures that the sector is under, and also ministers noting the enormous amount of work that is going on in community pharmacies to support patients and communities. MPs from across the political spectrum have also been calling for the support and investment that pharmacies need.”
The comments from Streeting and Kinnock came before the Department of Health and Social Care announced a new 2025/2026 contract for GPs on 20 December 2024, which Paul Rees, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association, said was “an outrage”.
“It is an outrage that GPs have been offered their contract for the next financial year before pharmacies have even received an offer for the current year — nine months late,” he said.
“The seemingly endless delays to this year’s contract negotiations only reinforces the belief that there is a lack of respect for pharmacies within government and leaves hardworking pharmacies abandoned in the dark, causing them stress and uncertainty about their future.
“Uncertainty about funding is preventing pharmacies from investing in better services and reform – instead making them take on debts or question whether they can continue at all.”
Also commenting on the GP contract announcement, Leyla Hannbeck, chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, said the government is “well aware of the devastation that the stagnated 2019 five year deal has caused to community pharmacies and to further delay the sector’s funding announcement is simply cruel”.
“The pharmacy minister was on record this week saying that there has been a 28% real-terms cuts to community pharmacy funding. We are therefore calling on the government and officials to address this real-terms cut to community pharmacy funding by giving a 28% uplift to the community pharmacy sector — we are calling on the minister and officials to do this urgently as our sector is struggling to survive,” she said.
In a poll carried out by CPE in June 2024, one-third of pharmacy owners in England said they had had to stop providing some nationally commissioned services owing to financial and operational pressures.
