The National Pharmacy Association chief executive Paul Rees has insisted Labour’s plan to deliver neighbourhood health centres as part of its 10-year plan to overhaul the NHS must involve investing in community pharmacies, as the government launches a consultation on its vision.

Labour today invited the public, NHS staff and experts including clinicians, to share their experiences and views of the health service, feedback it said would shape its plan.

Underpinning the vision, which Labour has said will be published next spring, are what it describes as “three big shifts in healthcare.” These include hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention.

The first of these steps, the government said, will see the creation of neighbourhood health centres close to patients’ homes and communities.

“Patients will be able to see family doctors, district nurses, care workers, physiotherapists, health visitors or mental health specialists, all under the same roof,” the government said.

Rees (pictured) reminded ministers that community pharmacists must be part of that neighbourhood health service because they are “the health professionals people know best.”

“A neighbourhood health service means investing in our amazing community pharmacy network, which is embedded in communities across the country,” Rees said, warning many pharmacies could be forced to close before the plan is published.

“We hope that government will stabilise the community pharmacy network which has been hit by devastating cuts and expand pharmacy services to bring care close to patients and their communities.

“While pharmacies are in financial crisis and need urgent funding to halt the terrible round of closures that is having such a damaging effect on patients and their communities, there is a huge opportunity to do so much more.”

English Pharmacy Board chair Tase Oputu said Labour’s plan “must consider how pharmacists can be enabled to support the best use of medicines across the system.”

She also insisted pharmacists will be “crucial to delivering ambitions around public health and prevention.”

“As pharmacists play a more clinical role in the NHS, we must ensure they receive the support they need throughout their career,” she said, calling on Labour to expand the Learning Support Fund, which supports healthcare students, to pharmacy students.