The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7235 p177
8 February 2003

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DoH: Agenda for change (more)

Hospital pharmacists and technicians to be covered by NHS pay review body

Further documents issued by the Department of Health as part of negotiations on the "Agenda for change" pay scheme confirm that pharmacists are to come under the remit of the National Health Service pay review body for nurses and professions allied to medicine. Hospital pharmacy technicians and assistants will also be covered from the outset of any new agreement on NHS pay.

The Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Whitley Council have been seeking this for many years and the guild described the move as one of the important gains within "Agenda for change". In addition, pharmacists have been listed specifically as being eligible to receive nationally agreed recruitment and retention premiums in order to maintain staffing levels. These premiums could be up to 30 per cent of annual salary.

The Department of Health has published two new documents on "Agenda for change". The first is the proposed agreement, which will go out for full national consultation. The second is a job evaluation manual. This contains one specimen job profile for a specialist renal or oncology pharmacist.

Ron Pate, chairman of the staff side of the Pharmaceutical Whitley Council, said that the manual needs to be treated with extreme caution at this stage because discussions relating to the specimen profile, and several other pharmacy job profiles, are ongoing. Discussions are also continuing on how pharmacists' emergency duty payments will be incorporated into the new pay scheme. Under the scheme individual allowances and additional payments are to be replaced by single pay bands. If consultations with staff representative bodies are successful, the pay scheme will take effect at a number of early implementer sites in England from 1 June. National roll-out should follow in October 2004.