Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the community pharmacy workforce to meet the needs of local pharmacies.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, backed by over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over the next five years, sets out the steps the National Health Service and education providers need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. The ambition is to increase training places for pharmacists by nearly 50% to around 5,000 by 2031/32, and to grow the number of pharmacy technicians.

Community pharmacy contractors are also now mandated to complete the Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey annually. This will provide more robust data to inform future workforce, service planning and investment decisions. NHS England are currently analysing data gathered from the 2022 survey and the results will be published shortly.