Key Summary
- The NPA wants the settlement to include a commitment to investing in expanding community pharmacy services and prescribing.
- The government should reform the pharmacy contract to give pharmacies confidence and end the uncertainty and unfairness created by funding clawbacks.
- Proper funding for medicine procurement and dispensing is needed to sit alongside investment in clinical services and prescribing.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) on Wednesday (14) listed above inflation funding settlement and progress towards services and contract reform as the criteria on which to judge a successful 2026/27 pharmacy contract deal in England.
The NPA said the deal should cover cost increases and bridge the £2.6 billion funding gap identified by the NHS-commissioned economic analysis last year.
The association wants the settlement to include a commitment to investing in expanding community pharmacy services and prescribing.
The government should reform the pharmacy contract to give pharmacies confidence and end the uncertainty and unfairness created by funding clawbacks, it added.
The NPA said the Community Pharmacy England (CPE) should not accept any offer that failed to address these areas.
Proper funding for medicine procurement and dispensing is needed to sit alongside investment in clinical services and prescribing, it added.
NPA chair Olivier Picard said: “Although increased funding in 2025 was a welcome end to years of real terms cuts, pharmacies remain heavily underfunded and shackled by a system that gives little idea from month to month what the Government will pay for NHS prescriptions. That needs to end.
“Financial uncertainty and underfunding of dispensing, alongside a lack of investment in new services leaves pharmacies struggling and holds back the Government’s ambition to transform care in our communities.”
“We want to work with Ministers to deliver their vision of a community health service and want to see a settlement that helps improve neighbourhood services for our millions of patients – proper funding of medicine supply, the embedding of prescribing and clinical services within the pharmacy contract, and real reform of the outdated pharmacy contract.”
In the 2026–7 pharmacy settlement, the NPA wants a real-terms increase in NHS funding for pharmacy – covering the increase in costs and activity, and a clear and credible commitment to closing the funding gap identified by the NHS-commissioned study.
A commitment to invest in expanding community pharmacy clinical services outside funding for medicines supply to deliver the Government's ambitions to move care into communities with prescribing services embedded as a nationally commissioned part of the pharmacy contract.
Real reform of the broken and outdated pharmacy contract to give pharmacies much-needed certainty about funding for NHS medicines and services, and an end to the pain of the unfair system of clawbacks.
