Controlled drugs (CDs) in schedules 1 to 3 “must not be assembled or dispensed” through hub and spoke arrangements between two different businesses, NHS England (NHSE) last week (October 30) warned.
An NHSE primary care bulletin told pharmacy contractors and commissioners that dispensing CDs in schedules 1 to 3 “through hub and spoke arrangements between two different legal entity dispensing businesses” is in breach of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001.
“All types of orders for these schedules of CDs therefore must be assembled and dispensed at the spoke pharmacy or dispensing doctor site,” it added.
Read more: GPhC hub and spoke review highlights areas for ‘improvement’
It comes after regulations permitting hub and spoke dispensing between different retail pharmacy businesses came into effect on October 1, allowing medicines to be dispensed centrally by one pharmacy on behalf of another from the end of the month.
The legislative changes have “permitted” model one of hub-and-spoke – in which a patient brings a prescription to the spoke pharmacy and the pharmacy sends it to the hub, which prepares and assembles the medicines before sending them back to the spoke.
Following this, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) published a review “exploring the implementation of the hub and spoke dispensing model across registered pharmacy premises in Great Britain”, including various areas needing “improvement”.
Read more: Pharmacy’s MDS conundrum: is Hub and Spoke the answer?
The GPhC analysed past pharmacy inspection reports from July 2023 to June 2025 and conducted a “targeted data capture” from inspections of “11 hubs and 17 spokes” this August.
It found that “while many pharmacies demonstrated strong practices” in some areas - with “94% of spoke premises” and “71% of hubs” meeting all standards - other areas required “further improvement”.
Previously, hub-and-spoke dispensing was only permitted between pharmacies within the same legal entity – meaning smaller independent pharmacies have been excluded from it.
