In its report into Community Pharmacy Services in the UK, the OFT recommends that the regulations controlling which pharmacies are entitled to provide NHS Services be abolished. This lobby brief provides background information on the OFT Pharmacy Report. Its aim is to make you aware of the negative impact this will have on the community pharmacy network, and the threat to patients in your constituency from reduced access to local pharmaceutical services.


1. The Control of entry regulations were introduced in 1987 to:

• secure a rational distribution of pharmacies throughout local communities
  
• ensure a ready and easy access to pharmacy services
  
• deal with the counter productive clustering of pharmacies around GP surgeries and shopping centres attracting a high customer flow - an issue that is as relevant now as it was then.
  

2. In the past 15 years since they were introduced, the system has worked well. It has provided pharmacists with a platform of stability and confidence to develop and launch a range of additional services, and to invest in their premises.

3. There is a fundamental incompatibility between a totally deregulated marketplace and the Government's commitment to deliver a well-planned and managed NHS pharmacy network. Health and Social Services provision - and within this NHS pharmaceutical services - has to be structured to ensure that the best use is made of limited resources, and that care is available to those in need, at a time and place of their choosing.

4. If the regulations go, local communities generally will suffer - but there will be a particularly damaging effect on rural, isolated and socially disadvantaged areas. Planning guidance and the Social Exclusion Unit recognises community pharmacy as a valuable neighbourhood resource and its importance in supporting a community.

5. It is the small, local neighbourhood pharmacy that is most likely to be adversely affected by deregulation. A recent report from the New Economics Foundation voiced similar concerns about the increase in closures of neighbourhood shops and services - and identified and acknowledged pharmacy as contributing to a sense of community.

6. Implicit in the term 'community pharmacy' is a close identity with, and a commitment to, the local community. Community pharmacies are currently at the very heart of local healthcare. They are 'the front door of the local primary healthcare services' - providing healthcare services and advice to their patients where they live.

7. People with the greatest needs - and who are traditionally heavy users of pharmacy services - will suffer the most: the elderly, infirm, housebound, families on low income, nursing mothers with young children, and those who live in disadvantaged communities. These are the very patient groups who are more likely to recognise the value of local services

8. The OFT has not only failed to recognise the value of the existing network of community pharmacies, but has also failed to recognise that pharmacists' principal focus is the provision of pharmaceutical services, or to recognise pharmacists as NHS healthcare professionals, rather than local shopkeepers

9. A number of notable consumer research surveys on patient satisfaction with pharmacy have shown that patients are happy with the distribution of pharmacies and the services they receive there.

10. In terms of access, the OFT report states at Paragraph 5.3, that the degree of local access to pharmacies is currently good, with the majority of consumers finding it easy to get to a pharmacy from their home and from their GP's surgery. Their own survey found that 89% of respondents found that their chosen pharmacy outlet was easy to get to from their home and 86% said it was easy to get to a pharmacy from their GP's surgery. (The Report later contradicts itself at Paragraph 5.63 by saying, 'the control of entry regulations do not, indeed cannot, ensure good access!')

11. Liberalisation of the rules will not increase patient choice - it will just change the distribution of pharmacies. Pharmacies will gradually become polarised around, and in, health centres, and in large supermarkets. These are locations where commercial aspirations could be greater than what is in the best interest of the patient.

12. Large supermarkets and retail outlets - particularly Asda - who are frustrated with the regulations getting in the way of their expansion plans - have lobbied vociferously for reform, and have been the principal drivers for the abolition of control of entry. Healthcare planning should be driven by the desire to provide high quality service to patients - not to maximise shareholder earnings!

13. Deregulation will destroy the platform from which Government intends to launch a wide range of enhanced pharmacy services - as detailed in 'Pharmacy In The Future - Implementing the NHS Plan'.

14. Were the OFT to have its way, after an initial surge in pharmacy openings, there could, in the long term, be a reduced, rather than enhanced provision of pharmaceutical services for the public.

• deregulation would create instability in the pharmacy sector
  
• put a blight on the investment plans of pharmacies
  
• risk reduced access to community-based services.

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