Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to help support pharmacies to increase their productivity.

The Department has recently implemented several reforms to help pharmacy contractors to improve dispensing efficiencies and productivity. Since January 2025, pharmacies have been allowed to dispense medicines in the original manufacturers package if the quantity in the package is 10% higher or lower than the quantity ordered on prescription. This removes the need to open and split the package in a pharmacy and increases the number of orders that can be processed through automated dispensing facilities. From 1 October 2025, pharmacies can make arrangements with a pharmacy owned by a different legal entity to undertake routine assembly of medicines on their behalf. This is known as hub and spoke arrangements and enables smaller pharmacies to utilise automated dispensing hubs to free up time for the pharmacist in the spoke pharmacy to focus on patient facing tasks.

On 17 July, draft regulations were laid with the aim to modernise the rules concerning who must supervise the dispensing of medicines in pharmacies. The Government is working to make the National Patient Prescription Tracking Service available in each pharmacy to help patients track their prescriptions online through the NHS App. This will reduce the burden on busy general practitioners and pharmacy teams and will avoid patients queuing at a pharmacy only to find that their prescription is not ready. The Government has also launched a public consultation on giving pharmacists increased flexibilities to supply an alternative product against a prescription, if the prescribed item is not available.