The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has pledged to keep bureaucracy to a minimum in its plans for new regulations governing pharmacy premises.

The proposals to set standards for and regulate premises, which will be open to consultation next year, would not see pharmacists undergoing unnecessary "form-filling", promised GPhC chief executive Duncan Rudkin (pictured).

Mr Rudkin stressed that the council would apply a similar approach to its equality and diversity scheme, which it agreed to implement in a council meeting on November 10.

"We're not into form-filling unless we absolutely have to be," Mr Rudkin told C+D. "We want to engage with people so they comply with the standards, rather than [telling registrants] ‘we say so'."

Mr Rudkin said he wanted to ensure the standards "made sense" to pharmacists, and to "enable and support" compliance with them.

The comments followed the council's announcement that its operating surplus had increased by 40 per cent between July and September, taking it to a pre-tax total of £4.1 million.

Mr Rudkin said the surplus was down to the council "putting pressure on itself to reduce costs".

"The surplus represents efficiency gains in how we're handling fitness to practise [cases]," he explained.

"We're not in the business of making a profit, but we've got a considerable need to invest in some of our systems for regulation, so it's important to have money available."

But Mr Rudkin could not confirm whether this would see a decrease in registrants' fees next year. "We will certainly seek to improve our financial information, so that we can set fees at the right level in the future, but it wouldn't be useful to speculate," he said.

He added that the council "was keen to avoid" fluctuations in fee levels.