Thank you for contacting me about the support available to pharmacists.
I would like to acknowledge the valuable and skilled work undertaken by pharmacists throughout the country every day. Community pharmacies do much more than simply dispense medicine - they play a vital role in our communities, offering advice and care.
A renewed focus on prevention has resulted in pharmacists playing a greater role in the delivery of healthcare services. To ease pressures on GP practices, the Government has committed to expanding the range of services available from community pharmacies, freeing up time for GPs to support patients with more complex needs.
In May this year, the Government published a delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, including GP services. I was pleased to welcome this. The Pharmacy First scheme is part of a support package to help support GPs called the Primary Care Recovery Plan. The entire plan sets out how the government intends to allow millions of patients faster access to care from their local pharmacies and GP surgeries.
Through the pharmacy-first scheme, the Government will invest £645 million over the next two years to enable pharmacists to provide treatment for a range of common conditions. Pharmacists will also now be able to supply prescription-only medicine for ear pain, severe sore throats, skin and urinary infections. They will be able to start courses of oral contraception. These measures are aimed at freeing up an estimated 2 million appointments.
The plan will also invest the equivalent of £35,000 per practice to provide technology for GPs to ensure people don't get engaged tones when booking via phone and to make digital access for appointments easier. The government will also secure 26,000 clinicians and 50 million extra appointments by March 2024.
I welcome that the Government is backing the recently published workforce plan developed by the NHS to train and retain more staff to deliver patient care over the next 15 years. This includes a commitment to expand training places for pharmacists by 29 per cent to around 4,300 by 2028/29. This will put the UK on the path to increasing training places by around half overall to almost 5,000 by 2031/32.
The Government is also committed to sustainably funding community pharmacies. The Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework five-year deal commits £2.5 billion in each financial year between 2019 and 2024 for community pharmacies. On 22 September 2022, following discussions between the Department, NHS England and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, which represents pharmacy contractors in England, the Government announced an agreement for the remaining years of the Framework, including a one-off investment of £100 million.
Our local, independent Pharmacies do fantastic work on the Island and I thank all those who are involved with the work they do. I continue to raise concerns on behalf of Island Pharmacists with Government Ministers.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.