The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7477 p517
10 November 2007

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Council agrees to reduce size of retention fee rise

Practising pharmacists are to pay a retention fee of £395 for 2008, £30 below the fee proposed in July, the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society agreed last week.

Andrew Gush, the Society’s Treasurer, outlined a number of external factors that had enabled the Council to reduce the proposed rises in fees. These included delays to costs associated with the implementation of the Pharmacy and Pharmacy Technicians Order 2007, the £3m in Government funding to support the establishment of the General Pharmaceutical Council, and a reassessment of amendments to the Gift Aid scheme, suggesting that the financial impact of changes to the scheme could be smaller than previously thought. Further information on the Society’s budgetary changes and the other fees for 2008 is set out on p543.

Mr Gush said that the Society had listened to members’ concerns expressed through Mark Cheeseman’s online petition (PJ, 18 August, p169) and the Society’s consultation, and was looking at providing reduced fees for part-time pharmacists and staged payments.

The introduction of staged payments is a priority for the Society, Mr Gush insisted. “It is going to happen and it will happen as soon as possible,” he said. “The parts of the process which involve the Society will be done quickly. We will not be the rate-determining step to the introduction of staged payments.”

If delays were to occur, he added, the Society would lobby the Department of Health hard to ensure implementation was not held up. Mr Gush hopes a system will be in place for the collection of fees for 2009. The annual payment would be broken into four staged payments with the first payment falling on 1 December 2008.

Mr Gush said he was sympathetic to the idea of reduced fees for part-time pharmacists. However, he added: “The actual costs of registration and maintaining the membership for a part-time person and a full-time person are the same but, unfortunately, they don’t have the same level of income. So, as a principle, the bulk of the Society’s members have to be content that if we reduce part-time fees, they will be cross-subsidising some members.” He said he was happy, as an individual, to support such a subsidy, but, as Treasurer, needed to establish whether there is “general contentment” within the profession about such a move.