Henry Gregg: ‘The only way to slow down pharmacy closures is to start closing that £2.6bn funding gap’

Stepping into the role of chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) in May 2025 must have felt quite apt for Henry Gregg. 

Having previously worked in respiratory care, he has been associated with community pharmacy throughout his career. As previous director of external affairs at the charity Asthma and Lung UK, he led its campaign to ban anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes, culminating in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. Prior to this, between June 2022 and May 2025, he was the chair of the Taskforce for Lung Health. 

Gregg has also worked for the Health Foundation, which campaigns for more resources in the NHS, and also completed a couple of stints in local government focusing on housing. 

The Pharmaceutical Journal spoke to Gregg to find out how he’s settling into his new role, his thoughts on the current state of pharmacy, his priorities for the sector and what he made of the NHS ten-year plan.

You have already had a lot of contact with community pharmacy in your previous roles — is that what drew you to this role?

Yes, it was two things really. First, it was the work I did with community pharmacy — I was really impressed by what I saw. And the other thing was the potential, which has subsequently been picked up by the ten-year plan. For example, all the services that we could bring through in community pharmacy, helping shift care from hospital to the community.

Specifically, when I was working in the respiratory area, we looked at asthma reviews with inhaler technique checks in community pharmacy, which then decreased hospitalisations. It was that exposure, but also understanding the potential for the sector — that was the reason I came into the role.

From your perspective, what is going well in community pharmacy and, conversely, what are your concerns?

What gives me a lot of hope is the clear role for community pharmacy that’s set out by the ten-year plan and its potential role within neighbourhood health services and centres. 

Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that pharmacists are really involved in those centres, because they will be GP led, but pharmacists need to be involved right from the start, otherwise you risk duplication of services.

What I found when working with various organisations on the smoking ban, was putting aside those areas where we might have policy differences and focusing on what we could coalesce around. That’s an effective model, because if you disagree with each other in public, or you have different messages, it’s easier to ignore those messages from the point of view of government.

Were you pleased with the NHS ten-year plan? Is anything missing that you think should be in there?

I thought it was really positive. Community pharmacy is mentioned a lot more than it was in the previous ten-year plan and it sets out a very clear vision for it.

The key is that any new services are properly funded, but also that it’s not just a question of trying to get efficiencies from dispensing to spend on services. You need an investment in dispensing to make it stable and predictable, and to support those NPA members who then want to offer the services and add new areas to their business. 

While there are clearly innovations and efficiencies to be made on the dispensing side, both sides need to be fully funded. 

Are you optimistic that we might see pharmacy closures slow down?

The only way to slow down pharmacy closures is to start closing that £2.6bn gap. It’s been identified by independent analysis as the gap between what it costs to deliver dispensing and prescriptions, and what the sector actually receives. And also that any new services are funded by government. If those two things happen, it will help to address those closures. But what we’re seeing at the moment is the result of years of underfunding. 

The NPA plans to launch a service called Future Pharmacy, which will provide advice and support on assets pharmacies need and, for example, if they’re interested in adding a consulting room or taking on new services, such as weight-loss or contraception services.

The only way pharmacies can become sustainable is to close that funding gap, but also for pharmacies to take on more services, both NHS and private, which will make them more sustainable. 

What services and safeguards can pharmacists offer in weight-loss services? 

Why community pharmacy is so well placed is that they can see the patient, offer holistic advice and talk to them about whether the medication is right for them and what else they need to do. It has been demonstrated that if you take [weight-loss] medication without advice and lifestyle changes, the effects are not long lasting.

That’s beginning already with pharmacists providing private weight-loss services. At the moment, the NHS service is very restricted. Only around 220,000 people are eligible for weight-loss treatment on the NHS in England. For example, 580,000 people live in Cornwall, but only 230 people are being treated for weight loss on the NHS.

What that shows is, first, the criteria are extremely narrow for NHS patients, which need to be expanded over time. Also people are not aware of it — they’re not being referred. Community pharmacists are well placed; they’ve got the skills, and they’re already embedded in local communities, but they need to be supported by government with a proper NHS rollout and the funds to make that happen.

The 2025 NHS GP patient satisfaction survey showed that 15% of patients reported that they have gone to a pharmacy before trying a GP, up from 14% in 2024. What more could be done to further raise the profile of pharmacy among the public?

The NPA is really trying to raise that profile. We’ve had a lot of press coverage around, for example, weight-loss management, and there are many other services provided through pharmacies. But there also needs to be more public education about Pharmacy First and how people can access it. 

Generally, we have seen that patients want to go to a pharmacy to solve their problem, because they know they can sometimes walk in and discuss it with a pharmacist straight away. But what I think they don’t want to do is to have to go back and forward from a GP to a pharmacist. 

In Scotland, pharmacists can make appropriate substitutions as well, so if that particular medicine is not available, but another one is that would be appropriate, pharmacists are able to make that switch or use a different dosage. Those kind of things really help to get people to use their pharmacy, because they don’t entrench that need to go back to the GP each time. 

By the end of your first year in office, what would you like to have seen change in the sector?

The first and biggest thing would be preparing community pharmacy in all the UK nations for pharmacists becoming independent prescribers in 2026. That’s a real burning platform, but also a huge opportunity that we must grasp; if we don’t, we will potentially lose pharmacists to other sectors or from the profession completely. We need to be in a position where we’re able to fully use those skills in community pharmacy. 

More widely, I would really like to see the NPA being not just a voice, but a vehicle for change, in the sense of supporting members through that transition, to helping them to expand the number of services that they can provide.

Finally, I would like to see some progress in terms of closing that £2.6bn gap and getting additional services fully funded so that we can start expanding, taking some of the weight off other parts of the health service, such as GPs and hospitals, delivering on that shift from providing care in hospitals to providing care in the community, which I think community pharmacy is perfectly placed to deliver. Those would be my top three. 

Is there anything else you would like to share?

My message is that it’s actually a really exciting time for pharmacists, but obviously it’s also really challenging. At the moment, I’m spending two days a week on the road meeting pharmacists, which has been the most useful thing that I’ve done since I started, because I hear about the challenges that they’re facing on a daily basis. It has really shocked me how difficult some of them are finding it – for example, having to remortgage their homes, or take out loans or credit cards, or borrow money from family, or draw down their pensions early, because it’s so difficult financially. 

If we can get it right over the next few months and years, and grasp that opportunity to expand our services, that will help to make pharmacies more sustainable. It will also deliver a vital role within the NHS and local health systems.

With that, and independent prescribing, it’s a really exciting time to be in pharmacy. There is a potentially very bright future for pharmacists, but we need to grasp it, work together and speak with one voice. It’s not going to happen by itself, we need to keep pushing to achieve it.