David Reissner, senior healthcare partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys LLP told C+D on Monday (September 26) that contractors are still “really struggling” with months of delays to market entry applications.

Mr Reissner said pharmacists approached him at the Pharmacy Show – three months after the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee first raised Capita’s failings with NHS England – who had put in applications at the beginning of the year and are yet to be processed.

“Someone else told me they are paying rent on premises that they can’t use because the application hasn’t been returned,” Mr Reissner said.

Responding to complaints from pharmacists of "severe backlogs" and late payments of enhanced services, a spokesperson for Capita told C+D yesterday (September 29) that it is “implementing a number of step changes to resolve current outstanding issues”.

NHS England has already apologised this month (September 14) for Capita’s failings, and promised an “operational assurance review” of its services. But Mr Reissner said the commissioner should take greater responsibility for the provision of its services.

“NHS England knew way back how complicated it was [to process pharmacy applications],` because they had people whose job it was to handle applications,” he told C+D at the conference.

“NHS England has a legal responsibility to do it, so just palming it off onto Capita – which has no experience or understanding [of pharmacy processes] – is not really good enough.”

A spokesperson for Capita said it is working with Primary Care Support England (PCSE) and NHS England to implement changes.

“Capita and the PCSE team have openly apologised to service users who have not received the consistent level of service quality that they should expect, or that we would expect, to provide,” they added.