The National Pharmacy Association has condemned being left out of contract by NHS England for nearly 300 days as “utterly unacceptable” (reports Patrick Grice). The Government has yet to start negotiations on a settlement for the current financial year which runs out in under three months’ time, it says.

Pharmacies are being “abandoned in the dark”, the Association said, adding that the delays with this year’s funding round had forced some pharmacy owners to take out six figure loans to stay afloat.

The continued delays may leave pharmacy owners with little choice but to take collective action later this month for the first in their history, the NPA is warning, after a ballot last month came out strongly in favour of action.

The NPA has written to NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard warning that pharmacies are being treated like second class citizens. It urged NHS England to “treat community pharmacy fairly and be seen to treat it fairly and on a par with other parts of the NHS”.

Matt Hancock, a former health secretary, told the Covid inquiry recently that pharmacies were “considered to be less of a priority”. He said that “in order to maximise taxpayer value for money, NHS England is, by tradition, really very tight on pharmacists … there is therefore inbuilt into NHS England senior management a lack of enthusiasm for giving more to community pharmacists than they absolutely have to.”

He went onto say that pharmacies “evidently were [an afterthought] as far as the system was concerned”.

Nick Kaye, NPA chairman, said: “The seemingly endless delays to this year’s contract negotiations are unacceptable and leave hardworking pharmacies abandoned in the dark.

“The last thing pharmacies want to do is to withdraw vital services from patients as a form of collective action, but we may be left with little choice unless things improve. Offering GP colleagues a contract offer for the next financial year before even starting negotiations with pharmacies for this year has only inflamed this situation further.”