Written evidence submitted by the General Pharmaceutical Council (RTR0160)

Dear Dr Luke,

Prescribing annotation on the GPhC Register

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) regulates pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacies in Great Britain. Our main role is to protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of members of the public by upholding standards and public trust in pharmacy.

We have a number of ways in which we do this including:

• registering and listing publicly the pharmacy professionals and pharmacies that provide care to patients and the public;
• setting and promoting the standards needed to enter and stay on our register;
• receiving assurances, in several ways, that pharmacy professionals and pharmacies continue to uphold our standards and acting appropriately when they do not;
• sharing with others what we learn through our work; and
• investigating concerns about the people or pharmacies we register and taking proportionate action to protect the public and promote our standards

The GPhC maintains a comprehensive, fully up-to-date, pharmacy register of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacies. On the register, we include information about whether pharmacists are annotated as an independent or supplementary prescriber.

At present, 21% of pharmacists registered in England have a prescribing annotation. As shown in the table below, ‘independent’ was the most common type of prescribing annotation, held by 21% of pharmacists (20% independent prescriber only and 1% both supplementary and independent prescriber).

We hope this information is helpful for the Health and Social Care Committee’s inquiry into ‘Workforce: Recruitment, training, and retention in health and social care’.

Yours sincerely,

Duncan Rudkin

Chief Executive and Registrar

June 2022