Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many additional pharmacies who applied for the Pharmacy Access Scheme payment were deemed eligible for that payment.

The Department applied the criteria for the Pharmacy Access Scheme (PhAS) to all pharmacies in England and published a list of those it deemed eligible in 2016. There were 1,340 pharmacies on this list.

NHS England reviewed, on application, pharmacies that believed there had been an error in drawing up that list; could demonstrate that a physical feature, such as a semi-permanent road block impeded access, meaning that in practice two pharmacies were more than one mile away from each other; or that the pharmacy was 0.8 miles or more from another pharmacy, in an area of high deprivation, and critical for access. Of 356 applications, a further 62 met these review criteria and were subsequently deemed eligible for PhAS payments.

In addition, pharmacies that returned from locally funded arrangements to the national community pharmacy contractual framework from September 2016 to date have been reviewed to determine whether they are eligible. A further 13 pharmacies qualified for PhAS payments via this route.