The Community Pharmacy England Committee will have a full meeting in July and we are seeking input from all pharmacy owners ahead of that.
Our Negotiating Team is currently working hard through the negotiations on the Primary Care Access Plan to make the most of the £645m investment of new money for the community pharmacy sector. The progress of these negotiations will be a key focus for our July Committee Meeting, as will our ongoing work to make the wider case for more investment in the sector, and we are keen for all pharmacy owners (our members) to have the chance to directly input into those discussions.
We are seeking views via a short poll which you can see here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QK3G8NF
This will be the first time that the Community Pharmacy England Committee has sought views in this way ahead of a Committee Meeting and we will have a discussion on the poll results at the meeting before reporting back to the sector afterwards.
This new way of working follows our rebrand on 30th May which signalled the start of our new approach to engagement to help us to build stronger relationships with pharmacy owners. We hope his new approach will help us better engage with members and listen to pharmacy’s views better.
We hope that as many of you as possible will share your thoughts with us ahead of our upcoming meeting – this is your chance to feed directly into the Committee.
As well as informing discussions at the Committee Meeting, your answers will be used to feed into our ongoing work to press for an uplift to core funding by enhancing our evidence base of what pharmacy owners are experiencing. This and future surveys will also increase the amount of data we have for use in our campaigning and influencing work.
Seeking your input more often is part of wider changes in how we work and influence on your behalf. We will shortly be releasing details about a new regular schedule of events where you can share your thoughts and add your input into our work.
This step change in how we engage with you is all with the objective of improving the way we fight your corner and reflect the sector’s views.
Survey for July’s Meeting
To help make the feedback process easier for busy pharmacy owners, we have developed a series of polls to gauge your thoughts on topical issues. The short survey of mostly multiple-choice questions should take around 10 minutes to complete.
For the July meeting, we are keen to hear your views on your pharmacy’s finances, pressures and capacity. In particular, we want to know how your business is coping financially, the impact the current economic situation is having on the care you can provide patients, your capacity to offer advanced services, and what changes (other than funding) would make your life easier. Beyond this, there is also space to add additional feedback should you have more to share, and a section where you can tell us what other topics we should collect pharmacy owners’ thoughts on.
Please complete the survey for July here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QK3G8NF
Note, this survey is for community pharmacy owners and head office representatives only. The survey will close at 11.59pm on Sunday 2nd July to allow time for our Committee to review all the feedback ahead of the meeting.
Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Community Pharmacy England, said:
“We are now in the middle of critical negotiations to make sure that community pharmacies benefit as much as possible from the £645m investment that was promised to the sector as part of the Government’s Primary Care Access Plan. We are also continuing to highlight the immense pressures on the sector and to press for further support and investment in the sector.
This critical work will clearly be the focus of our upcoming Committee Meeting, but we have also ringfenced time at the Committee to reflect on what we are hearing from all of you, as the pharmacy owners we represent. As the voice of community pharmacy, we want to collaborate even more with our members across the sector. Our new pre-Committee Meeting polling offers the chance for all pharmacy owners to tell us about their reflections and primary concerns and challenges, as well as their ideas for future polling.
The results of this poll will help us to listen to and to better represent your views, and the data we gather will also help us to get our key messages across to Ministers, officials and other policymakers. There is a real commitment from everyone here to shift the ways in which we engage with you, and in time we hope these surveys will become a really valuable tool in delivering your thoughts directly to our Committee, and beyond.
I’m conscious that this is yet another survey, but the more we hear from you the more powerfully we can represent your views to Government, so I hope you will be able to find ten minutes to complete the survey. You can also use it to let us know if you would rather we engaged with you in other ways in the future, or to flag other key issues – whatever you are able to share, we’ll be listening.”
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