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Figures released by pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock this morning point to a dramatic underspend of the £645m allocated to help the sector deliver Pharmacy First and other clinical services, with just £82m – or 12.7 per cent of the total – spent in the first eight months of the current financial year.  

Mr Kinnock was responding to a question from John Whitby, Labour MP for Derbyshire Dales, who asked “how much of the £645m allocated for Pharmacy First had been used as of 3 December 2024”. 

Mr Kinnock replied: “Verified data to the end of November 2024 shows that £82m has been spent in the 2024-25 financial year on the seven common clinical pathways and the associated incentive payments on expanding blood pressure and contraception services. 

“A comprehensive view of all spending against the Pharmacy First budget will be available after the end of the financial year.” 

While additional moneys from the £645m pot will have been spent before the start of the current financial year on April 1, 2024 – as well as during the busy winter months from December onwards – the figures published by Mr Kinnock this morning nonetheless suggest there may have been a significant underspend. 

The previous Conservative government first announced a £645m ‘investment’ in the English pharmacy sector in May 2023 to be delivered over a two-year period concluding at the end of March 2025.

The money was billed as helping pharmacies deliver Pharmacy First – which launched on January 31, 2024 – as well as the hypertension case-finding and contraception services.  

The National Pharmacy Association issued a warning last summer that as little as £180m from the promised funding could be spent by April 2025, leaving a £465m “black hole” in the sector’s finances.

National Pharmacy Association chair Nick Kaye commented: "This a shocking underspend, with only a small percentage of funding earmarked for the scheme actually being delivered to community pharmacies.

“This is not helped by other services informally signposting patients to pharmacies rather than through formal referral mechanisms and a lack of understanding about the minor illness and urgent medicines elements of the service from other health care professionals.

“Pharmacies are shutting at record rates due to the impact of 40 per cent cuts to their budgets, with those that remain open hanging on by their fingernails.

“The government must therefore urgently clarify how the remaining hundreds of millions of pounds will be invested into pharmacies, bearing in mind the immediate need to stabilise the pharmacy network and the long term potential to shift more health care into the community.

“We also need clarity about the scheme's future, with pharmacies currently in the dark about whether Pharmacy First will continue beyond April.”