Retention fees

We are yet again in the position where pharmacists who work for the NHS are being penalised for doing so. Two weeks ago it was stated that a pharmacist with five years’ post-qualifying experience with a postgraduate diploma could earn a similar amount as a newly qualified pharmacist venturing out into community practice. Now we are faced with a retention fee of £425 that, of course, most community-based pharmacists will not have to pay since they will have this refunded.

Joanne Hodgson
Acute Cardiac Admissions and Stroke Pharmacist
North East Wales NHS Trust

Driving pharmacists away from a career in the NHS

From Mr P. A. Clarke, MRPharmS

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has once again shown its members that it can do what it likes.

The people involved in making this decision may think that I am complaining over a small amount of money but I doubt that many (if any) of these people are earning a mediocre band 6 NHS salary like myself. In real terms, the fee is now nearly a third of my monthly salary (after tax).

B. S. James made a good point regarding concessions to the retention fee (PJ, 28 July, p100). A pharmacist earning £40,000 a year is in a better position to pay a £400 plus fee than those of us earning little over £20,000.

As we are all aware, community pharmacists are paid much greater salaries than hospital pharmacists at the beginning of their careers. The fact that many community employers will pay retention fees for their employee pharmacists (and some give bonuses at Christmas time) means that this increase will only go to widen the gap between hospital and community pharmacy and drive more pharmacists away from a career in the NHS.

Peter Clarke
Rotational Pharmacist
Sunderland Royal Hospital

Part-time work will become an expensive hobby

From Mr A. McKee, MRPharmS

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s proposed fee increase is outrageous. If this fee rise goes ahead, my requirements to practise will include around 40 hours of unpaid continuing professional development and a further 20 hours to cover the retention fee. That is 60 hours — seven and a half working days — before I can make any money.

And then there is the liability insurance. Given my current part-time status, this turns work as a pharmacist from a useful (if stressful) income stream into an expensive hobby.

The last round of punitive fee increases drove away members who did not need to work but this latest increase, if allowed, will make it uneconomical for many part-timers (including myself) to work in pharmacy.

The Society is supposed to represent us. Instead of rolling over and passing on the costs of reform it should be cutting back hard or refusing to comply without additional government funding. For heaven’s sake, get some backbone chaps!

Andy McKee
Dorchester

Society should take note and look at petition

From Mr J. E. Turnbull, MRPharmS

Regarding the increase in the retention fee, I would like to discuss the impact on the part-time pharmacist.

Until relatively recently there was a concession for pharmacists who work a limited number of hours, shown by a reduced retention fee. That privilege, however, has been removed.

The dramatic increase on an already notable figure is large enough to warrant an impressive response on an online petition, but has anyone considered the effect on the people for whom registration and insurance may now encompass almost 10 per cent of their annual salary?

The PJ (4 August, p129) included the statement: “… it is the Government that has imposed most of the change.” A demerger and inability to manage pension finances or not, why should I have to incur this cost?

The Society should take note and look at the petition. And, as a good pharmacist friend of mine said, when was the last time you saw 8,000 pharmacists unite against anything?

James Turnbull
Sheffield

Clobber those who can best afford it

From Mr A. O. Bond, FRPharmS

After retiring from business I paid the part-time retention fee for some time. Having passed a “significant” birthday I am now firmly on the non-practising list.

I have “hung in there” because I care for the continuance of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as a society. Not as a registering body but a society as variously defined in the Oxford English Dictionary: “the state or condition of living in association, company or intercourse with others of the same species — the system or mode of life adopted by a body of individuals for the purpose of harmonious coexistence or for mutual benefit, defence, etc” or “a number of persons united for the promotion of a common purpose by means of meetings, publications, etc”.

During my time of ever reducing professional activity I have renewed my membership each year with a cheque for £100 which includes an ever increasing amount for my subscription and a steadily declining amount as a contribution to the Benevolent Fund, which I am pleased to read is mobilising its potential to help inadequately insured pharmacists, ex-pharmacists or their spouses affected by the recent floods.

I am but one individual in a large society. This ridiculous increase in retention fees is now approaching my budgetary threshold for continuing my membership. If the Society or some interfering Government department wants to be rid of non-practising members they should have the guts to say so and we will walk away, weeping, into the night.

If we are to be allowed to stay, may I suggest that next year the burden for running the registration department, soon to be the General Pharmaceutical Council, clobbers those who can best afford it, ie, the owners of and profit takers from the registered premises and that to give value for money for those extra premises fees, they inspect more thoroughly and move more rapidly to strike out the inadequate, the grubby and those that fail to fulfil the obligations they take on when applying for NHS contracts.

Andrew Bond
Glastonbury, Somerset

Bah, humbug!

From Mr A. Plumridge, MRPharmS

I realise that you will be inundated with letters regarding the proposed hike in fees by a whopping 50 per cent. I would like to know how the Royal Pharmaceutical Society thinks I am going to be able to pay that.

My wife is also a pharmacist currently on maternity leave and her maternity pay is due to finish at the end of September. We have two children currently aged three and a half years and four months.

So with Christmas looming, we will have to find £850 by 1 January. Ebenezer Scrooge had a good phrase for that — bah, humbug!

Adam Plumridge
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

A cash cow to be milked at will

From Mr P. J. Tidy, MRPharmS

At a time when NHS pharmacists are struggling to get even the 2.5 per cent salary increase that our colleagues in the rest of the UK are getting, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s proposal to raise retention fees by some 50 per cent must stand as a monumental insult and a slap in the face to every working pharmacist in the country.

For months members have asked, pleaded, and finally begged the Society to be careful with our money and more than one member believed that the proposed split would be used as a device to lever ever more cash from members’ pockets.

However, I doubt whether even the most gloomy prophet could have foreseen the extent to which the satraps of Lambeth hold the membership in such comprehensive contempt. No wonder this self-serving oligarchy is panic-stricken at the thought of membership no longer being compulsory and the end of the Society’s “closed shop”.

Who in their right mind would want to remain a member of an organisation that treats its members as a cash cow to be milked at will regardless of events?

Philip Tidy
Lancaster

Why is the membership paying?

From Mr M. A. Bowe, MRPharmS

After learning about the change in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s retention fee I would like to know how the Society can justify such an excessive rise?

Why should the members be paying to cover the Society’s pensions deficit and the demerger?

Has it been confirmed that the Society will be in charge of the new General Pharmaceutical Council and the body akin to a royal college?

If not, then why are we paying for it?

Mike Bowe
Advanced Practice Pharmacist
Newcastle Primary Care Trust

Present to us a clear breakdown

From Miss E. G. Wighton, MRPharmS

Can anything be done now that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has reached the conclusion that members must pay the bill for bureaucracy?

Blatant propaganda, such as “the new fee level will … build its reserves to ensure that a future professional body has sufficient funds to carry out its work … promoting pharmacy and serving its members”, surely will not be taken seriously in the face of a substantial increase in fee.

I have not yet, in my short career, found anyone who has directly benefited from the “work” of the Society or its influence other than appearing as the ogre who could reduce years of good practice to redundancy over a dispensing error.

The Society’s press release (PJ, 4 August, p129) cites the increased costs of “separating the Society into two independent bodies” as a reason for the fee increase but later, in the same article, Hemant Patel says “we anticipate a substantial financial contribution towards the cost of demerger”.

If the Society is to receive financial aid why should we pay the increased fee? If we have no influence over Government decisions or funding then clearly investment in “serving the members” has been poorly spent.

Finally, if the Society will be “free of regulatory duties” why do the “increased costs of regulation” apply to us?

I would ask that the Resource Management Committee and the Society’s Council present a clear breakdown of the costs, how the fees will be spent and how many hours were spent by Council members lobbying the Government to secure funding for the demerger — all in the new spirit of transparency, of course.

Emily Wighton
Bristol

Membership coughing up for the Society's pension fund

From Mr G. Diamond, MRPharmS

I am certain that the majority of the membership will be less than joyous at their early Christmas present in the guise of the 50 per cent increase in the retention fee. Bear in mind that everyone needs to let the tax office know the new fee, so that it can get the appropriate tax adjustment in its tax code for 2008–9.

Nonetheless, what is annoying for most members is that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society behaves as if its members were part of a mutual friendly society and we are somehow going to have some benefit from all this robbery.

Frankly, the membership is being asked to cough up for the Society’s pension fund while most pharmacists are left to organise their own pensions in the community. NHS dentist contactors and GPs benefit from being members of the NHS superannuation scheme. If ever a profession was so badly represented by its elected governing body then the Society deserves first place in the top 100.

Gerry Diamond
Manchester

ANDREW GUSH, Treasurer of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, responds:

I am determined to anticipate, plan and prepare today for the needs of our members tomorrow and I do recognise and understand that this large increase in fees will be unwelcome but it will lead to long-term sustainable financial stability.

Our professional future is bright and the rate-determining step to our success must not be inappropriate financial planning. We must make the right decisions at the right time rather than just popular decisions at convenient times.

Living on yesterday’s savings is all well and good until they run out. I am confident of our future stability in context of making this decision and it is my expectation that increases in fees over the next couple of years will be below inflation as long as we restrain expenditure increases and control budgets — which we must do.

The decision on fees agreed by the Society’s Council at its July meeting is designed to ensure the long-term financial viability of the Society and the two successor bodies that will be crucial for the profession in the future.

Although the deficit in the Society’s pension scheme is one reason for the changes, other external factors, including the Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Act 2007 (Section 60 Order) and the costs of a demerger from one integrated body (the Society) into two (the General Pharmaceutical Council and a new professional body akin to a royal college), also need to be managed.

While the demerger has been instigated by the Government, the Society must be fully engaged in the process to ensure the best outcomes for both pharmacy and the public. However, we will also be looking to Government to make a substantial financial contribution towards the cost of a demerger.

Additional financial impositions, for example, changes to the rules surrounding charitable tax donations such as Gift Aid, will increase the Society’s tax burden by an estimated £1m.

The Society’s President, Hemant Patel, has gone on record to say that members will see clear benefits from the Council’s decision on fees and, that in future, more emphasis will be placed on activity that supports and promotes the work of pharmacists.

Additional resources have already been earmarked to support practice, education and communications activities. The Society is also committed to its devolution programme, which is supporting the development of the profession across England, Scotland and Wales.

The Society has now entered a 60-day period of consultation with the membership on the fees. At the end of the consultation period, all responses will be analysed by an independent external body and the findings presented to the Society’s Council at its October 2007 meeting.

The Council will publish a report on the findings and any final decisions it makes about the fees will be made available on the Society’s website and in The Pharmaceutical Journal

The consultation document is available on the Society’s website and also in hard copy on application to the Registrar’s Office. Responses to the consultation are invited by Wednesday, 3 October 2007.

I ask members to participate in this important consultation and to be reassured that taking these tough decisions is not pleasant but considered unavoidable.

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