The current regulations on the control of entry into new National Health Service dispensing contracts serve the public interest by supporting a comprehensive national network of community pharmacies in all the places where people live, shop and work, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society believes.
Responding to a report produced by Superdrug Stores Plc (see above), the Society said on September 7 that control of entry allowed local health authorities to decide when pharmaceutical services were needed by a local community. This recognised that such service provision needed to be planned as an integral part of primary care and not just left to market forces.
Mr John D’Arcy (director, National Pharmaceutical Association) described the report as “an expanded reiteration of what Superdrug has said before”. He saw no reason to get rid of or modify the current regulations, which already allowed the public to have a choice of pharmacies to visit at places they wanted.
Considering the proposal that the NPA should merge with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, Mr D’Arcy said that this had been proposed many times in the past. The NPA, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and other pharmacy bodies already spoke with one voice on many areas of community pharmacy over which they shared common ground, he said.