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Some community pharmacy prescribing sites have had consultation numbers capped or have been closed completely, as national funding to support the sites came to an end on 31 March 2026.
The ‘Independent prescribing in community pharmacy pathfinder programme’ formally concluded on 31 December 2025, but NHS England said it would support services that wished to continue until the end of March 2026 with a £1,500 payment per site and access to IT system Cleo Solo.
In a letter published in October 2025, NHS England instructed integrated care boards (ICBs) to develop local business cases to continue commissioning clinical services that incorporate independent prescribing.
However, The Pharmaceutical Journal understands that some services were stopped completely once the national support ended on 31 March 2026.
On 2 April 2026, Reena Barai, community pharmacy contractor at SG Barai Chemist in Sutton, London, told The Pharmaceutical Journal: “We just know that it’s ended, because the national funding has ended. So until we get some national funding or local funding, we’re just in limbo.”
Barai had been offering hypertension, lipid management and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) reviews during the pathfinder programme at her pharmacy in South West London, which was then limited to lipid management from January to March 2026, before stopping completely when the national support ended.
“[The service] really did help to ease the pressure in primary care and recognise community pharmacy as a pillar of primary care and supporting patients using our prescribing skills,” she said.
“Our GPs have all said they love working with us. We’ve really supported their patients. One of our practices has said they would never have achieved what they’ve achieved in terms of lipid management if it wasn’t for our support. There were three of us in our area doing the work, and our patients have been really upset [about the service ending]. We’ve built a relationship with them over the last year and a half … and it’s been convenient [for them].”
Barai and two other prescribing sites across South West London were told by NHS South West London ICB in January 2026 that the services would end on 31 March 2026.
Barai added: “We knew it was ending, but we just kind of all hoped that somehow, something would magically happen that would allow us to continue with the funding, but it hasn’t.
“I really hope that either something comes out of the national negotiation for the community pharmacy contractual framework around the use of independent prescribing in community pharmacy, and some local commissioning of a service.”
In the same letter published in October 2025, NHS England said that, from April 2026, it would consult with Community Pharmacy England to determine what will form any part of a national service offer.
Consultations on the ‘Community pharmacy contractual framework’ for 2026/2027 are currently underway; however, it is unclear whether this will include a national prescribing service.
Superintendent pharmacist and owner David Evans told The Pharmaceutical Journal that throughout the pathfinder programme, pharmacy group Evans Pharmacy hosted four prescribing sites across different ICBs.
However, from 1 April 2026, one site has been closed completely and the other three will see consultation numbers capped, he added.
Evans, who works at the Castle Donington pharmacy in Leicestershire, where an on-the-day illness prescribing service has been closed, told The Pharmaceutical Journal that he was “disappointed that [the service] has been discontinued because it increases inequality and access to care, it increases urgent care use, A&E attendance, and, of course, it reduces capacity for GPs to do other work on prevention and frailty”.
“Local GPs have reported it [was] like having an extra local clinician, and that they would be very disappointed if there was a reduction in the service,” he continued.
Evans noted that closing the site will also be “very difficult for patients”, who would have to attend healthcare services elsewhere or pay privately for a pharmacy consultation, adding that even if the on-the-day illness service is recommissioned in the future, patients and other healthcare providers “got used to one system, and then that system is not going to be available … there will be a gap between that and whatever comes next. You’re going to have to re-educate patients, GPS, the whole system”.
At the three other Evans Pharmacy pathfinder sites in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB and NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB will continue to fund up to 30 consultations per site each month, NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB confirmed to The Pharmaceutical Journal.
However, at one Evans Pharmacy site, this will equate to around one-third of the monthly demand for the service that they were seeing during the pathfinder programme, The Pharmaceutical Journal understands.
According to the Joined Up Care Derbyshire website, across Derbyshire as a whole, a total of four community pharmacies hosted pathfinder prescribing sites. In total, 3,200 pathfinder consultations were carried out between April 2025 and January 2026, with “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from patients and GPs, it added.
NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB highlighted that nearly all (96%) rated the service as excellent and 75% would have used their GP if the pharmacy service had not been available, while the remainder would have used A&E, NHS 111 or a walk-in centre.
- This article was amended to clarify that the £1,500 payment from January 2026 was for three months, equivalent to £500 per month
