Robert Evans / Alamy Stock Photo
The pharmacist workforce is rapidly expanding but remains “underutilised”, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has said.
In response to the government’s call for evidence on the NHS ten-year workforce plan, the RPS said pharmacists already have the skills needed to support the NHS ten-year plan’s proposed shifts from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to early detection and prevention.
However, it added that in order to unlock pharmacists’ potential, there needs to be “investment in leadership, infrastructure and system enablers”.
In its call for evidence, published in September 2025, the government said that rather than ask how many staff would be needed to implement the ten-year plan, it said the question should be: ‘What workforce do we need, what should they do, where should they be deployed and what skills do they need to deliver better care for patients and citizens?’
The RPS’s response highlighted the need for pharmacist independent prescribers to be integrated across all sectors, alongside commissioned pathways, to make the most of their expertise.
It also said there was a need to scale up funded designated prescribing practitioner capacity, given that from 2026, all pharmacists are expected to graduate as independent prescribers.
The RPS also called for: pharmacy leadership in integrated care boards and primary care networks; medicines optimisation leaders to focus on deprescribing and management of polypharmacy; pharmacists being active contributors to digital records and integrated data flows; and attainment and degree awarding gaps within under-represented groups to be addressed.
Effective delivery of the NHS ten-year plan will require the pharmacy workforce to be trained in digital literacy, which “will need to be core training for all undergraduates working in healthcare”, the RPS said.
The RPS’s response also reiterated its call for protected learning time, noting that “many pharmacists are currently unable to engage in professional development activities as part of their working time”.
”One of the key reasons for this is the need to ensure the delivery of frontline clinical services to patients,” it added.
“We know that many pharmacists are undertaking learning and credentialing outside their working hours, which is impacting negatively on their mental health and wellbeing.”
Tase Oputu, chair of the RPS’s English Pharmacy Board, commented: “If the government is serious about transforming the NHS, then pharmacy must be at the heart of its workforce plan.
“Pharmacist prescribing and innovations like pharmacogenomics offer huge potential — but to deliver this will require investment in the workforce and pharmacy leadership to maximise the benefits for patients.”
In its own response to the government’s call for evidence, the Company Chemists Association (CCA) said that its modelling had suggested that expanding Pharmacy First could create capacity for at least 17.7 million routine primary care consultations each year.
Pharmacy also offers “untapped capacity” for delivering more vaccinations, and there was potential for a “doubling of current provision in community pharmacy up to 20 million vaccinations annually”, it said.
The CCA added that its modelling estimated that increasing the workforce by more than 15,000 employees would be needed to deliver all the services it suggests in its response.
“Not all this capacity will need to be new capacity from growth in the workforce — some may be released from the existing workforce through better use of skill mix,” it said.
The workforce plan call for evidence closed on 7 November 2025.
