Community pharmacies falling behind on data security toolkit submissions

More than 50 per cent of the community pharmacies in England have failed to complete their Data Security and Protection Toolkit 2025 with the deadline in less than two weeks.

Necessary guidance regarding the toolkit has previously been provided by Community Pharmacy England (CPE) earlier.

The toolkit is used by pharmacists to complete information governance (IG) declaration. The last date for submission is 30 June 2025.

CPE in association with NHS DSPTK is managing the toolkit and necessary data security protections.

There is an on-demand webinar produced by CPE and NHS DSPTK. It discusses the latest MFA elements, new changes in the toolkit and interaction with delegates to provide guidance material and question answers.

The NHS Parent Organisation Code (POC) headquarters (HQ) batch submission feature continues to allow pharmacy owners with three or more premises to complete a single, consolidated submission for all their pharmacies.

Most pharmacy teams should have access to information to answer the technical questions in the toolkit.

Pharmacies with refreshed and updated templates in CPE’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) workbook will meet the requirements for almost half of the toolkit question by just typing or pasting ‘see GDPR WB’ into the questions.

All the necessary guidance materials, including the updated multi-factor authentication guidance are published.

Also, pharmacy owners with multiple pharmacies are requested to cross-check their pharmacy lists with their NHS POC code to guarantee accuracy and chance for error rectification.

Therefore, the pharmacy owners are urged to utilize the guidance and fulfil the requirements at the earliest.