Community Pharmacy England seeks pharmacy owners view ahead of its committee meeting

The Community Pharmacy England Committee has adopted a new approach to engagement with sector by inviting all pharmacy owners to share their views on pharmacy’s finances, pressures and capacity ahead of its meeting in July.

It has sought views of pharmacists via short poll by Sunday (2 July) and will have a discussion on the poll results at the meeting before reporting back to the sector afterwards.

The key focus for July Committee Meeting will be to make most of £645m for the community pharmacy sector, and also on the ongoing work to make the wider case for more investment in the sector.

This new way of working follows association's rebrand on 30th May which signalled the start of its new approach to engagement to help them to build stronger relationships with pharmacy owners.

The association hopes this new approach will help them better engage with members and listen to pharmacy’s views better.

Survey for July’s Meeting

To help make the feedback process easier for busy pharmacy owners, we have developed a series of polls to gauge your thoughts on topical issues. The short survey of mostly multiple-choice questions should take around 10 minutes to complete.

For the July meeting, we are keen to hear your views on your pharmacy’s finances, pressures and capacity. In particular, we want to know how your business is coping financially, the impact the current economic situation is having on the care you can provide patients, your capacity to offer advanced services, and what changes (other than funding) would make your life easier.

Beyond this, there is also space to add additional feedback should you have more to share, and a section where you can tell us what other topics we should collect pharmacy owners’ thoughts on.

Note, this survey is for community pharmacy owners and head office representatives only.

Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Community Pharmacy England, said: “We are now in the middle of critical negotiations to make sure that community pharmacies benefit as much as possible from the £645m investment that was promised to the sector as part of the Government’s Primary Care Access Plan. We are also continuing to highlight the immense pressures on the sector and to press for further support and investment in the sector.

"This critical work will clearly be the focus of our upcoming Committee Meeting, but we have also ringfenced time at the Committee to reflect on what we are hearing from all of you, as the pharmacy owners we represent. As the voice of community pharmacy, we want to collaborate even more with our members across the sector. Our new pre-Committee Meeting polling offers the chance for all pharmacy owners to tell us about their reflections, primary concerns and challenges, as well as their ideas for future polling.

"The results of this poll will help us to listen to and to better represent your views, and the data we gather will also help us to get our key messages across to Ministers, officials and other policymakers. There is a real commitment from everyone here to shift the ways in which we engage with you, and in time we hope these surveys will become a really valuable tool in delivering your thoughts directly to our Committee, and beyond.

I’m conscious that this is yet another survey, but the more we hear from you the more powerfully we can represent your views to Government, so I hope you will be able to find ten minutes to complete the survey. You can also use it to let us know if you would rather we engaged with you in other ways in the future, or to flag other key issues – whatever you are able to share, we’ll be listening.”