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The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has expressed "extreme disappointment" that the UK government offered new pay to NHS consultants, while nursing pay deal remain disputed. RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen has written to new Health Secretary Victoria Atkins demanding fresh negotiations regarding this year's pay deal, and requested an urgent meeting to discuss their dispute. Pat warned that more than 100,000 RCN members in England voted for continued strike action in June, as they feel undervalued. "The government has now shown it has the political will to negotiate on pay reform for some of the highest earners in the NHS in contrast to our members who received the lowest pay rise in the public sector," she wrote in the letter. NHS nursing staff in England was awarded a five per cent pay rise 2023/24, but the union argued that it is not enough to keep up with inflation.

The Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has called the recent announcement of six per cent pay rise for the public sector workforce as 'unfair' for the community pharmacy sector. On Thursday (13 June), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced that pay scales for most doctors and dentists will increase by at least a six per cent this year after the government accepted the recommendations from the independent pay review bodies in full. Responding to the recent announcement Chief Executive Janet Morrison, said: "The public sector workforce pay rise will be welcome news for its recipients given the huge inflationary pressures and the ongoing impact of the cost-of-living crisis. But for community pharmacy owners - who have faced 30% funding cuts in recent years and who are struggling to meet their rising wage costs - this feels unfair, and very far from good news. At Community Pharmacy England we are fully focused on the current financial and operational pressures and fighting hard for a sustainable long-term funding arrangement.

Following the UK government's new pay offer to NHS consultants, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) wrote to the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins calling for fresh negotiations about nursing pay in England last week. However, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has rejected their demand, stating that there is no basis to reopen talks as the pay deal was accepted by the NHS Staff Council. In the previous pay deal, nurses were given a one-off payment between £1,655 and £3,789 for 2022/23, and a 5 per cent consolidated pay increase for the 2023/24 financial year. Nursingnotes quoted a DHSC spokesperson as saying: "We hugely value the hard work of NHS nurses and that is why we provided a 5 per cent pay rise. "We also provided two significant non-consolidated awards, which for nurses at the top of Band 5 was over £2,000, equivalent to an extra 6.1 per cent of their basic pay.

Rising chronic illnesses and an aging population are threatening to bankrupt the National Health Service, Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said on October 11. Streeting announced a substantial £1.1 billion injection to strengthen the NHS with the goal of clearing the backlog and introducing additional clinics on evenings and weekends. The frontbencher outlined a reform agenda to ensure NHS is back on its head for the future of healthcare in the UK. Streeting said that a Labour government will not waste "money we don't have"- instead aims to revolutionise the NHS by shifting its focus from hospitals to communities. "Our emphasis is on transitioning from an analogue to a digital framework and prioritising prevention over sickness-oriented healthcare," he noted.

Trainee pharmacists at Boots in England and Northern Ireland will get a pay increase from 1st August. The new pay rates agreed between the Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA) Union and Boots was announced on Tuesday (4 July). The joint statement released by Boots and PDA Union said: "Following discussions, we are pleased to announce that there will be a pay increase for Trainee Pharmacists, in England and Northern Ireland, commencing in role this summer." Trainee Pharmacists working in Boots Pharmacies in Wales are employed directly by the NHS and are therefore outside the scope of the pay negotiations between Boots and the PDA Union. Funding for each Boots Trainee Pharmacist in Scotland is at a higher level and Boots continues to pass on the fully funded amount as salary to those team members

A winter NHS crisis is inevitable unless the government acts now to reverse the worrying decline in community pharmacies. Years of government underfunding could see 3,000 pharmacies in England - around a third of the network - having no option but to shut their doors to patients in the next few years. That figure is based on independent assessments from Ernst & Young and UCL/LSE healthcare professors: it is not scaremongering - it is the reality the country faces. Fifty per cent of pharmacies are already in financial distress because government funding has been falling in real terms since 2019 and that figure is predicted to rise to 75 per cent within the next two years. The government needs to act now and invest in pharmacy or sleepwalk into a healthcare disaster as we have seen with access to dentistry care. Prescription volumes have risen consistently year-on-year by roughly 2 per cent which means fewer pharmacies doing more work and under greater pressure than a decade ago. Ten years ago around 11,200 pharmacies in England were dispensing roughly 79,000 prescriptions; nowadays around 11,500 are dispensing roughly 89,000 prescriptions. The secretary of state recently asked pharmacy to do more to avoid a winter NHS crisis and at the same time said there will be no new money to pay for those additional services. This at a time when the network is in decline with random unplanned pharmacy closures - 640 closures since 2016 - and pharmacy staff face huge workload pressures as prescription demand is increasing year-on-year. The government's approach to pharmacy literally does not add up: the pharmacy contract is not fit-for-purpose now let alone dealing with a NHS winter crisis.

Boots UK has agreed to grant a five per cent pay increase to its pharmacists following a collaborative agreement with the Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA). This raise acknowledges the unique market conditions faced by pharmacists in the community pharmacy sector, Boots UK and PDA said in a joint statement on Oct. 9. According to the statement, the pay increase applies to all pharmacists within the PDA Union's bargaining unit, except for those who joined or received a pay raise after August 2023. Moreover, trainee pharmacists or those not meeting performance standards are not eligible for the raise. Additionally, pharmacists and store managers will receive a pro-rata, one-time non-consolidated payment of £750 in August 2024. This payment serves as recognition for their dedication to establishing and providing new core and advanced NHS services, particularly in light of the substantial changes anticipated in the upcoming year, the joint statement said. The services include new medicines, hypertension, contraception, and common conditions services in England, the clinical community pharmacy service in Wales, and the Pharmacy First services in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

After the government announced to award pay rise to pubic sector workers, pharmacy trade bodies have expressed their disappointment at the neglect shown towards funding crisis in community pharmacy. The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair, Andrew Lane, said: "Our sector can't help but feel utterly neglected after seven years of crushing real terms cuts to pharmacy funding, amounting to half a billion pounds, and no hint of any relief to come. "This week's public sector pay awards, which include a large number of our health service colleagues, highlight that there's an unresolved funding crisis in community pharmacy which needs urgent attention." "Four months into this financial year, there is as yet no clarity even on current arrangements." "After stepping up to tackle Covid and keep the wheels on the NHS, the sector deserves better than to be neglected in this way," Andrew opines.

LloydsPharmacy has offered three per cent increase in base pay backdated to 1 April for its store pharmacists, the union of Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDAU) who represented them has announced. "We are pleased to announce that following a consultation of its members, the PDAU has informed the company that agreement can be reached on the company's latest offer, made in July 2022," said the PDAU. The offer made by the company also includes introduction of an overtime rate of 1.5 times basic pay for each hour worked after contracted hours. This will run for a trial period and be reviewed as part of the next pay round. "All pharmacists will receive an initial £1,000 payment under the proposed LTIP scheme, paid in April 2024. This will be to all in the bargaining unit and will not be dependent on meeting any criteria such as targets," said PDAU.

Almost nine in ten community pharmacists in England say they have patients who sometimes go without prescription medicines because they cannot afford the prescription charge levied by the government. Sixty-eight per cent of pharmacists in a National Pharmacy Association (NPA) survey, conducted via email in June 2022, said this has become more frequent in the past year - suggesting that the rising cost of living could be leading more people to miss out on vital medicines. While prescription charge does not apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in England an NHS patients needs to pay £9.35 per item. For patients who need multiples medicines the cost could be exponential and virtually unaffordable amid rising inflation and higher cost of living. The survey found that 89 per cent of pharmacies in England have patients who sometimes go without prescription medicines due to cost. For most pharmacists (74 per cent) this happens one to five times a week. Fifteen per cent said they see such patients from six to 20 times a week.

The Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA) has reiterated its call for all pharmacists working at Boots to join the PDA Union to support the collective voice of the profession within the company. It said this would enable PDA to send direct communications to pharmacists working at Boots and keep them up to date with key matters impacting their work life. Currently, the association uses the company communication channels to cascade key information to the non-member pharmacists, however, it fears such measures can be disrupted by management. Besides, having more member pharmacists at Boots would strengthen their "negotiating power", PDA said.