Plans for PCTs to hold supplementary lists of individual pharmacists and have powers to regulate them could reduce patients’ access to care, the CCA and AIMp have warned.

The Department of Health has suggested PCTs could hold the lists, which could be used to check pharmacists’ credentials, as well as tackling concerns about individuals, as they do for pharmacies.

But in their response to the consultation on legislative changes needed to underpin the development of the white paper vision, the pharmacy groups said PCTs should not have such powers.

They said it was unreasonable to expect PCTs to assess pharmacists’ clinical competence and rule on their fitness to practise, as this “highly specialised role is the regulator’s raison d’etre.”

The groups added that a national list held by the regulator, but accessible to PCTs and employers, would be a better system, allowing pharmacists to work easily in different areas of the country.

Without this ability they said there could be “significant restrictions on workforce mobility that will jeopardise access to pharmacy services for the public.”

The groups also said a “lack of detail” around the establishment of pharmaceutical needs assessments and supplementary lists made it difficult to decide whether DH cost/benefit assessments were correct.

And they laid out a set of criteria that PNAs must meet, such as being enabling, not restrictive, being reviewed “at bare minimum annually”, and being piloted rigorously.