The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7469 p292
15 September 2007

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• The profession (3)
• NPC (3)
• Community pharmacy
• Prescription pricing
• Wholesaling
• Anticoagulation
• Dispensing
• The Society (3)
• Regulation
• Fees consultation (2)
• Retention fees (2)
• Listening friends
• The Journal

Letters to the Editor

Fees consultation

Let our voices be heard

From Mr W. T. Brookes, FRPharmS

The Treasurer of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is once again urging members to respond to the formal fees consultation to help inform Council thinking (PJ, 8 September, p256).

In supporting that call may I suggest that members ignore the first eight questions of the consultation, which I believe are irrelevant to the matter in question.

Just answer “yes” to question 9 and “no” to question 10. This will give the Council a clear message to think again, listen to members’ real concerns — as expressed in your letters pages — and concentrate on how to meet the real financial requirements of this Society, not a regulatory body set up by the Government and an as-yet-unknown professional body.

It is the members’ Society so let the members’ voices be heard.

Bill Brookes
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Let us vent our concerns through the consultation

From Mr M. Beaman, FRPharmS

In recent weeks your correspondence columns have been filled with letters expressing concern at the proposed increases in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s retention fees. Much of the blame for this increase has been directed at the Society — mistakenly in my opinion.

The Society finds itself in an invidious position having to tackle changes arising from the White Paper as well as financial management of issues generally not of its own making. The viability of pharmacy organisations such as the College of Pharmacy Practice are similarly affected.

Issues such as paying the retention fee by instalments and the effects on part-time and non-practising pharmacists need to be urgently reviewed as has been highlighted by previous correspondents. Let us, therefore, use the consultative channels that have been established to vent our concerns rather than doing so in public, which does us no credit.

At a time of major opportunities for pharmacy in the changing world of health care it is a sad reflection on the profession that its members should be expending so much energy on the issue of fee increases.

Mike Beaman
Rustington, West Sussex

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