The GPhC will take no new entrants into its temporary register after September this year.

Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who joined the register in the past two years will be able to practice “for the next six months while the temporary register remains open”, GPhC chief executive Duncan Rudkin said in an announcement yesterday (March 16).

Read more: GPhC survey: 46% on temporary register unsure about return to pharmacy

He called on these registrants to apply to re-join the GPhC’s main register to continue practicing after September 30.

Mr Rudkin thanked those who “returned to work to help care for patients and the public during the pandemic” by signing up to the temporary register.

6,000 extra pharmacy professionals

The government intendeds to close all healthcare professions’ temporary registers – including the GPhC’s – by September 30, the regulator wrote.

The GPhC’s temporary register was set up after then health secretary Matt Hancock “asked [the regulator] to use [its] emergency powers in order to rapidly register pharmacy professionals to assist in the national response to the COVID-19 emergency”.

Pharmacy professionals who had voluntarily removed themselves from the GPhC’s register, or those removed for non-renewal in the last three years – and did not have fitness-to-practise issues – were able to practice once again by joining the temporary register.

The temporary registered allowed around 6,000 professionals to re-join the pharmacy workforce during the pandemic.

Though the GPhC temporally registered more than 3,000 former pharmacists and over 2,000 former technicians by March 2020, C+D reported in May that year that almost half of temporarily registered pharmacy professionals were unsure about going back to work in the sector.