The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) is ‘hopeful’ about the new government’s support for the sector, but is planning another day of action to keep pharmacy ‘on the agenda’.

‘The new government has had lots of issues to deal with in its first few weeks. We want to make sure that we remind the government this is still a key priority,’ NPA chief executive Paul Rees told The Pharmacist in an exclusive interview last week.

With 10 pharmacies in England closing each week, and many pharmacies feeling ‘close to the brink’ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the NPA’s second day of action is ‘really important’ to keep government attention on the sector, Mr Rees said.

The action is planned on 19 September – just before this year's Labour Party conference, Mr Rees said.

‘The new health secretary, Wes Streeting, spoke in advance of the general election about how he was aware of the financial crisis, the fact that there were these huge closures, the fact that often pharmacy closures are in lower income areas, and that actually, a strong pharmacy network is really important to tackle health inequalities,’ Mr Rees said.

‘He talked about reversing the tide of closures and ensuring that pharmacies were at the heart of primary care.'

While he said the NPA feels ‘hopeful’ about the new government, having had ‘a really good meeting with Wes Streeting earlier this year’, Mr Rees said it was still ‘very important’ to ‘keep up the pressure’.

‘There are so many competing demands on government, and we have to make sure that we keep this on the agenda,' he added.

‘If we don't, the risk is the government just turns its attention to lots of other issues,’ Mr Rees said.

The planned day of action in the autumn will seek to raise awareness of the ‘desperate situation’ facing community pharmacies, he said.

With contractors unlikely to feel any benefit from the yet to be agreed community pharmacy contract ‘until 2025, possibly March or April’, ongoing issues like medicines shortages ‘continue to get worse’, Mr Rees said.

‘Every day, people are hoping that there'll be an announcement on a new contract,’ he said.

‘People are feeling that gulf in terms of their bank balance. The extent to which they're in the red is increasing every month. People say that, maybe a year or two ago, some months they'd be in the black, some months in the red. But now, every month, they're in the red.

‘They're having to borrow money from friends and family. They're having to re-mortgage their home to keep the pharmacy going.

‘The whole system now, the whole network, is running on empty, and we need the new agreement to be announced as soon as possible. And it needs to substantially increase the amount of money that goes to community pharmacy,’ Mr Rees said.

‘Pharmacy is pretty much the one part of the NHS infrastructure people can actually access. It's almost impossible to get a GP appointment for many people. Waiting times for hospital are incredibly long.

‘If we are able to invest in and save what we have in terms of the pharmacy sector that will help cut GP waiting times and hospital waiting times, and it will enable people to get health care support on their doorstep,’ he added.

Mr Rees also highlighted the medicine shortages crisis that is particularly affecting the UK.

‘That can only come to an end when government properly supports and invests in community pharmacy and the purchasing of drugs,' he said.

‘At the moment, we spend half the amount they spend in France and Germany on procuring medicines. And so, of course, as we know, global pharmaceutical firms prioritise other nations over the UK. The UK comes last on the list for medicines in Western Europe, and that's because we're paying less than other nations.

‘There are occasional shortages in other comparable nations, but there's nothing on the scale that we're seeing in the UK at the moment, and it's simply getting worse,’ he said.

On 19 September, the NPA will be asking members to highlight that ‘when they dispense medicine on that day, that they're dispensing medicines at a loss, because many of the public are just not aware of that’, Mr Rees said.

Pharmacists will also be asked ‘to record all of the free advice they're giving, because, again, people assume pharmacy teams are being paid for the work they're doing’.

‘Other clinicians within the NHS are never expected to do work and not get paid for it,’ Mr Rees said.

Community pharmacy teams could also sound an alarm between 9.00am and 9.02am, ‘to highlight the emergency, the alarm that is being felt within community pharmacy’, Mr Rees said.

And they might repeat some actions from the previous day of action on 20 July, like wearing black, blacking out windows and turning out the lights.

Pharmacy teams will also be asking patients to sign a cross-sector petition of support, which has now surpassed 300,000 signatures.

'We can see the evidence that people care a lot about community pharmacy, and it matters to them,' Mr Rees said.