A petition is calling for the government to give MPharm students full access to an NHS financial support fund.
The parliamentary petition to widen access to the NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF) was launched by Kingston University fourth year pharmacy student Zeenat Akmal and has so far had 6,073 signatures. It closes on June 2, and government will respond to it if it reaches 10,000 signatures.
In May, the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) updated its guidance for the NHS Learning Support Fund that offers financial support for healthcare students.
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It allowed MPharm students access to the travel and dual accommodation expenses (TDAE) part of the fund from the 2025-26 academic year, meaning they can claim back travel expenses for mandatory NHS placements.
But MPharm students still can’t access other financial support in the fund. It includes a training grant of £5,000, a specialist subject payment (SSP) of £1,000, parental support of £2,000, and the exception support fund (ESF) of up to £3,000.
The petition calls for the government “to extend the NHS Learning Support Fund to fully include MPharm students to ensure fairness and encourage entry into the NHS”.
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It says the access to the TDAE “does not address the wider financial struggles” students face as the MPharm “is highly intensive and can leave little time for paid work”.
“Extending the NHS Learning Support Fund could help reduce hardship, support wellbeing, and ensure students can focus on becoming the next generation of NHS pharmacists,” it added.
Waiting
Akmal told C+D that even with the TDAE, a lot of students “don’t have the money in the first place” to spend on travelling to placements.
She said as MPharm students have a lot of contact hours every day of the week, it reduces the time they are able to get additional work to subsidise the money they get through student finance.
“I was on a four-week placement and one of the weeks I was sent two hours away, costing me £75 just for the travel,” she said.
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“You then put in an application to reimburse it, and it takes weeks to get it back. I went on placement at the beginning of March and I’m still waiting to get it approved.”
Akmal has been promoting her petition on social media, with nearly 30,000 followers combined on her @pharmazeezee TikTok and Instagram accounts.
She’s also a student representative for the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) and said the union is helping her with the campaign to push through the petition and encouraging people to write to their MPs about it as well.
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The PDA is hosting an online event on April 16 to discuss the campaign with its members.
It previously launched a fair funding campaign back in November 2023 that called for MPharm students to access the NHS LSF, and this led to just the TDAE part of the fund open to pharmacy students.
It said it will “continue to advocate for fair funding arrangements that recognise pharmacy students’ vital role and remove financial barriers to joining the profession”.
Demand
British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) president Martina Aikon said extending the NHS LSF to pharmacy students would recognise the subject “as a core allied healthcare profession”.
She said with a “a greater emphasis on clinical placements”, students are doing “longer and more frequent placements” and despite being able to access the TDAE, students can’t get the “full range of benefits” from the fund.
“Access to training grants, parenteral support, and the ESF would help ease financial pressures that impact thousands of students across Great Britain. As the clinical and prescribing responsibilities of pharmacists continues to grow, it is only fair that the available support to students reflects these changes,” Aikon said.
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Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) England pharmacy board chair Tase Oputu said full access to the NHS LSF would “support efforts to attract and retain a diverse future pharmacy workforce, which is essential to meet growing demand for pharmacists across the NHS”.
The DH was approached for comment.
It comes as a chief executive launched a petition calling on the government to ban tech that allows pharmacies to switch a patient’s EPS nomination without their consent.
