The NPA has today (March 18) urged its 6,000 member pharmacies in England “to start the process from April 1 of reducing opening hours and services, if no new and sufficient funding is delivered” as part of historic collective action.
In November, 99% of polled English NPA members voted to take collective action to limit pharmacy services unless funding was improved.
At the time, the membership body told C+D that despite previously planning to act on members’ votes before Christmas, it would give the government “time to digest” the vote and wait until January to make any recommendations on collective action.
Read more: Contract chaos: NPA issues pharmacy collective action ultimatum
Now, the organisation has announced that in two weeks’ time it will go ahead with the protest action, the first in the NPA’s 104-year history, amid “a swathe of new costs due to hit pharmacies from the start of next month”.
The NPA confirmed that the protest actions on the cards will be the same ones voted on by members in September, including:
- Serving notice on opening hours above the minimum required by their contract, which 98% of respondents said at the time they would be willing to do
- Withdrawing from locally commissioned services, which 96% agreed to
- Withdrawing from making free home deliveries of medicines that are not funded, which 93% agreed to
- Refusing to co-operate with certain data requests above those required for patient safety and contractual minimums, which 99% agreed to
Read more: NPA gives DH ‘time to digest’ results of 99% ‘Yes’ collective action ballot
“It is for each pharmacy to determine what action they can safely take and give patients and local NHS boards notice of any changes to ensure continuity of care,” the NPA said, adding that pharmacies wishing to cut back their hours “need to give the NHS five weeks' notice”.
“There’s no suggestion anything will happen immediately as a cliff edge because it can’t, people have to give notice and they have to operate sensibly,” NPA communications director Ben Russel yesterday told press during a briefing.
“Nothing left to give”
During yesterday’s briefing, NPA chair Nick Kaye said that the decision to act comes with “a genuine crunch” on the horizon.
He stressed that in addition to national living wage, employer national insurance contributions (NIC) and business rates rises, clawbacks and short dispensing months will make April “really hard” for contractors.
Read more: Streeting slams NPA ‘sabre-rattling’ over collective action
“We’ve got people borrowing money, we’ve got people remortgaging houses…we’re giving people two weeks to say: ‘Let’s get on with it, let’s start reducing those hours’,” he said.
“It’s the first time in 104 years that the NPA has asked its members to do this stuff…[but] there’s nothing left to give for lots of people,” he added.
Describing the “unsustainable” funding’s effects on the sector, Kaye added that “somebody described it to me [by saying], ‘The end is coming slowly and all at once, and it’s starting in April’”.
No deal?
Kaye stressed that he has “no idea what’s going on with the deal - there’s rumour, there’s conjecture, of course there is, but I genuinely have no sight of when the deal is going to come and what it’s going to look like”.
It comes as health secretary Wes Streeting last week said that the government was in the “very final stages” of concluding a new pharmacy contract deal – which was originally due last March.
“The ideal situation for me…is actually a great funding deal comes out in the next three days and we don’t have to do anything on the first of April,” Kaye told press.
Read more: Saturday shutdown: Pharmacy protest ballot could see weekend closures
When asked about the outcome of a contract being announced closer to April 1, Kaye told C+D that “the devil will be in the detail”.
He said that the NPA would have to “really quickly” assess the deal “and that’ll be where [it’s] response will come”.
“Sabre-rattling”
In September, Streeting criticised the NPA for “an unhelpful degree of sabre-rattling and threats of collective action” at the Labour Party conference.
The latest NPA protest comes after two “days of action” to raise awareness on the plight of the sector.
Read more: ‘Enough is enough’: Whistles and crisis at #SaveOurPharmacies protest
In June, community pharmacists around England took part in the first protest day by dimming their lights and wearing black.
And in September, they also rang bells to “sound the alarm about the crisis being faced by pharmacy”.
