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Community pharmacies in England delivered a record number of flu vaccinations at the start of this winter; however, confusion over COVID-19 jab eligibility and poor communication meant the wider vaccination programme had been “absolute chaos”, a senior pharmacy representative has told a committee of MPs.
Speaking at an evidence session on the effectiveness of the government’s vaccinations strategy and if the rollout of flu jabs in winter 2025 reduced pressure on hospitals — held by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee on 11 February 2026 — Fin McCall, chair of the service development subcommittee at Community Pharmacy England (CPE), said pharmacies were already handling large volumes of vaccinations and could take on significantly more.
There were 3,346,895 flu vaccinations delivered through community pharmacies in October 2025 — the highest October total since the community pharmacy flu vaccination service began, in 2015 — a 6.4% increase on October 2024 (3,144,937) and an 85.2% increase on October 2023 (1,807,234), according to CPE data.
CPE has yet to publish figures for this winter programme after October 2025.
McCall told the committee that the scale and accessibility of the community pharmacy network meant they were well placed to expand vaccination programmes further.
“We’ve got 6,000 general practices with 10,000 pharmacies,” he said.
“Rather than reinvent the wheel […] we want to invest in infrastructure for whole of primary care and be really clear with patients what they need to do.”
However, when asked about his own reflections on the most recent winter vaccinations campaign, he said it was “absolute chaos” and “there’s total misinformation around which patient groups were accessible for COVID[-19]”.
Pharmacies have previously reported similar issues, with high numbers of ineligible bookings leading to frustration and abuse from patients.
McCall urged for clearer messaging and better booking controls were needed to prevent similar issues in the future.
Asked by MPs how effectively the NHS was using community pharmacy capacity for vaccinations, he said: “I think they’re using it quite well at the minute but we could be doing lots more.
“There’s been a huge uptake in the BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic] communities and deprived areas through community pharmacy, in both flu and COVID[-19] uptakes.”
From October 2025, community pharmacies in England also began offering NHS children’s flu vaccinations for patients aged two to three years.
However, McCall added: “There’s a massive gap when we look at all the other children”, as well as opportunities around respiratory syncytial virus, pneumonia and shingles “in terms of helping patients protect themselves and be that prevention centre.”
From a patient perspective, McCall argued that community pharmacies offer greater convenience than many other settings.
“Community pharmacy is more accessible than most other vaccination centres and patients come to us more often than any other healthcare professional — on average 12 times more than a GP,” he added.
“Community pharmacy has delivered flu [vaccinations] for 10 years. We delivered over 40 million COVID[-19] vaccines. We are respected and trusted in this area. I’d like to see all of the vaccinations being moved to community pharmacy as a core resource centre for it.”
He continued that this would help in “freeing up space in GPs and moving secondary care work into primary care”.
Other witnesses suggested improving access would have the greatest impact on vaccination uptake.
Greg Fell, president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, told MPs that “access and ease are the most important things”.
Amit Aggarwal, medical director at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, highlighted vaccination workforce and service expansion through community pharmacy as “noteworthy achievements”.
In a report published in January 2026, the Health and Social Care Committee recommended reinstating a target for 95% of children in England to receive all scheduled vaccinations.
