The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has slammed the NHS’s “bombshell” move to claw back millions of pounds from community pharmacy owners over the next 12 months.
The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) announced in its Drug Tariff Category M pricelist for January 2026, published on December 23, that there was a £158m “overdelivery” of medicine margin at the end of June.
It said the subsequent adjustment applied to January 2026 is a “reduction of £16.8m per quarter” and the amount to be recouped will be “smoothed over the following 12 months”.
Opaque
NPA chair Olivier Picard said it is “appalling” that the NHS plans to “claw back millions” from pharmacy budgets each month “under an opaque formula” that was “quietly slipped out just before Christmas”.
He added that the move “will hit pharmacies indiscriminately” and comes “less than a year” after the announcement of the 2025 Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) funding deal - which the government described at the time as a “substantial increase in investment”.
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“This exposes a complete disconnect between government rhetoric and the real world facing pharmacies, and simply highlights the fact that the current Drug Tariff and pharmacy contract remain seriously underfunded and fundamentally broken,” Picard said.
Pharmacy owners “are left unable to predict, even week to week, what their funding will be,” he stressed, adding that such uncertainty “is damaging and can only hold back the reform the government rightly wants to see”.
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He went on to say that pharmacies “cannot plan, cannot invest and are forced to dispense NHS medicines, day after day, often at a loss, with little idea of whether they will be reimbursed adequately” - and that “no other part of the NHS would be expected to operate like this”.
“It’s time for the government urgently to commit to genuine contract reform that funds medicines supply sustainably, gives pharmacies confidence to invest and aligns words with actions,” he added.
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It comes after Community Pharmacy England (CPE) warned in December that many community pharmacies are “hanging on by a thread, losing money and struggling to cope with the ongoing demand from patients and the public”.
The negotiator said these pressures are being “compounded” this year by a “troubling flu season, resident doctor strikes and severe financial pressures”.
And it added that pharmacy owners are ending the year “with no certainty about the future funding beyond March 2026”, along with the knowledge that the autumn budget “will add yet more costs”.
