The recruitment of pharmacists and other additional roles into general practice is slowing, the latest figures from the National Workforce Reporting Service (NWRS) suggest.

Pharmacists remain the most popular Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) role, but recruitment has slowed dramatically since the beginning of this financial year.

And the primary care network (PCN) pharmacist workforce increased by just 15 full-time equivalent (FTE) roles nationally between March and July 2024.

ARRS was established in 2019 and provides funding towards the salaries of additional roles in PCNs such as pharmacists, social prescribers and physiotherapists.

According to the latest available figures, in July 2024 there were 5,330 pharmacists and 1,914 pharmacy technicians working within PCNs, the majority of which are likely to be at least partially funded through ARRS.

Dr Graham Stretch, president of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association (PCPA), told The Pharmacist that the trend in workforce size was broadly in line with year-on-year increases in ARRS funding allocations between 2019 and 2024.

'If you're a PCN, you've got a certain amount of money to spend, naturally, you're going to do your best to spend it, because we know what happened where it wasn't spent - that money was lost [and] sort of disappeared into the deficit somehow,' Dr Stretch said.

And he suggested that there could have been a 'rush' to spend ARRS funding before the end of the last financial year, when the scheme was originally intended to end.

Recent slowing might suggest 'caution' given the recent change in government, Dr Stretch added.

Slowing overall recruitment may also be impacted by wage increases, reducing the number of roles that can be funded within the overall envelope.

In 2023, reimbursements under ARRS were uplifted to match Agenda for Change pay increase, however there was no overall change to the total funding available for PCNs. This meant that while PCNs could pay staff more, they had less money to hire further additional roles.

And since pay increases were announced earlier this summer for roles within general practice, PCNs have also reported a lack of clarity about whether ARRS reimbursements will be uplifted to match. Clinical directors told our sister title Pulse PCN that without an uplift to the overall budget, they may have to cut the number of ARRS staff employed by the PCN and ‘revise’ plans.

'Continued confidence' in value of ARRS pharmacists

Differences in role recruitment could reflect when new roles were added to the scheme, as well as the value of each role to the PCN, Dr Stretch suggested.

And he said the popularity of care coordinators was 'no surprise' given the complexities of navigating the health system, particularly for more vulnerable patients.

'It's obviously gratifying that pharmacists came out on top,' Dr Stretch added.

He told The Pharmacist that he welcomed the 'continued confidence' in the value of pharmacists that the recruitment of this role demonstrated.

'Pharmacists deliver expertise, safety and capacity in general practice and improve outcomes for patients whilst contributing to the work of the multi disciplinary team,' he said.

Dr Stretch also noted the stabilising of pharmacist recruitment including from other sectors.

And he highlighted the long-term NHS workforce plan, released in 2024, that committed to a more 'modest' increase of 15,000 ARRS roles by 2036/37.

'This expansion would be carefully managed taking into account additional training of pharmacists, to ensure the growth in workforce is sustainable, and considers the additional capacity required to staff roles across primary care,' the workforce plan added.

And it committed to expanding training places for pharmacists to almost 5,000 by 2031/32.