Creating a Neighbourhood Health Service
Labour’s Plan includes the creation of 250–300 Neighbourhood Health Centres by 2035, with 40–50 to be delivered during this Parliament. These centres will act as multidisciplinary “one-stop shops” offering services like diagnostics, mental health support, and pharmacy-led care.
The total investment backing the Plan is £29–30 billion. However, the specific cost breakdown for neighbourhood centres hasn’t been published yet. There is mention of possible private investment in infrastructure, but this is also currently vague.
“The PDA would likely question whether the £30 billion overall NHS investment is sufficient when spread across all sectors, especially given inflationary pressures and existing deficits.”
As for staffing, a new NHS workforce plan is expected in autumn 2025, which will include revised projections and strategies for recruitment, including pharmacy roles. The Plan also highlights the growing number of pharmacist independent prescribers and the need to scale up training, potentially in partnership with universities and research bodies.
The PDA has long warned about the pharmacist workforce crisis, particularly in community settings. With many pharmacists already reporting unsafe staffing levels, the Plan to staff new centres raises serious questions:
- Where will the pharmacists come from? There’s no clear strategy to prevent a drain from community pharmacies into these new centres, which could destabilise existing services and contribute to workforce pressures.
- The PDA would call for workforce impact assessments and ring-fenced funding for training and recruitment, including support for independent prescribing.
The PDA has advocated for pharmacists to be treated as autonomous clinicians, not just as support staff within multidisciplinary teams. There’s a risk that in these new centres, pharmacists could be subsumed under medical hierarchies, limiting their ability to lead on medicines optimisation and long-term condition management.
The PDA would push for clear role definitions, clinical leadership opportunities, and contractual protections for pharmacists working in these settings.
Digitally transforming the NHS
The Plan aims to digitally transform the NHS, with a strong focus on integrating AI, robotics, and genomics into the care delivery process. A key goal is to create a single patient record that is accessible across all services, including community pharmacies.
The PDA has repeatedly highlighted how community pharmacists have been excluded from digital integration efforts, despite their frontline role in patient care. The slow rollout of shared care records and the piecemeal access to Summary Care Records (SCR) have long been sources of frustration.
“The PDA would argue that past failures in tech procurement stem from a top-down, hospital-centric approach that overlooks the needs of primary care and pharmacy.”
There’s concern that pharmacists are often consulted too late in the design of digital systems, leading to tools that are not fit for purpose in pharmacy settings.
There’s a risk that vendor lock-in, opaque contracts, and lack of interoperability will continue to plague efforts to modernise systems. From a PDA standpoint, the NHS must prioritise open standards, interoperability, and user-led design, with pharmacists at the table from the start.
Ultimately, the PDA would argue that tech transformation must be co-designed with pharmacy professionals, not imposed upon them. They would likely support Labour’s ambition in principle, but warn that without structural reform in procurement culture, the same delays and inefficiencies will persist.
The PDA would likely call for greater transparency in procurement decisions and independent oversight to ensure public money is spent effectively.
Dedicated funding for pharmacist roles
From the PDA’s perspective, the question of whether pharmacists benefit meaningfully from the hospital-to-primary care funding shift is a critical one, and currently, this remains unclear.
While Labour’s Plan rightly acknowledges the expanding clinical role of pharmacists, the PDA would argue that pharmacists themselves have not yet been guaranteed the investment, support, or recognition needed to deliver on these ambitions safely and sustainably.
Pharmacists are increasingly being asked to take on complex clinical responsibilities, including independent prescribing, managing long-term conditions, and delivering preventive services, but many are doing so in environments where staffing levels are inadequate, workloads are unmanageable, and professional autonomy is constrained.
“The PDA has long warned that without dedicated funding for pharmacist roles, including training, protected learning time, and clinical supervision, the profession risks being overburdened and undervalued.”
Moreover, the PDA would likely challenge any assumption that simply shifting funding from hospitals to primary care will automatically benefit pharmacists. We would argue that unless pharmacists are explicitly included in workforce planning and funding allocations, there’s a real danger that the money will be absorbed by larger providers or diverted to other professions.
For the Plan to succeed, pharmacists must be seen not just as a workforce to deploy, but as clinical leaders and decision-makers in their own right. They must be involved in early conversations at the design stage, not the implementation stage, and not be left to pick up the pieces.
The voice of pharmacists has been excluded from the policy conversation
From the PDA’s perspective, Labour’s failure to meet with the organisation, despite multiple formal requests and its role as the voice of over 40,000 pharmacists, is more than just a missed opportunity. It’s a serious oversight that raises questions about the credibility of the 10-Year Plan.
“Pharmacists are expected to play a central role in delivering many of the Plan’s ambitions, yet their professional voice has been excluded from the policy conversation.”
Pharmacists are already under immense pressure, working in environments where staffing levels are unsafe, workloads are rising, and burnout is widespread. Asking them to take on even more clinical responsibility, without first addressing these systemic issues, is unrealistic and potentially unsafe. The PDA has long argued that any expansion of pharmacists’ roles must be matched by investment in the workforce, including protected learning time, supervision, and fair remuneration.
One of the most glaring omissions in Labour’s Plan is the lack of a clear strategy for how independent prescribers in community pharmacy will be fully and safely utilised. This is not a new issue. The idea of pharmacists prescribing as a solution to GP shortages was being discussed over a decade ago.
“The fact that we still lack a national framework for deploying these skills, despite significant investment in training and many pharmacists taking on these opportunities, is a damning indictment of successive governments’ failure to plan for the future.”
Next steps
In light of this, the PDA believes the profession must take the initiative and present its detailed proposals. These should include a fully funded national workforce strategy, clear clinical leadership roles for pharmacists in multidisciplinary teams, and contractual protections that reflect their growing responsibilities. Pharmacists must also be given full access to patient records and be involved in the co-design of digital tools that support safe and effective care.
Equally important is ensuring pharmacists are involved in service design and commissioning decisions. National frameworks should support consistency and equity across regions, and pharmacists must be recognised as autonomous clinicians, not just as a workforce to be deployed.
If Labour is serious about building a modern, preventative NHS, it must start by listening to the people who will be tasked with delivering it. The PDA’s exclusion from the process so far is a warning sign that the profession’s voice is still not being heard where it matters most.
By Jay Badenhorst, PDA Director of Pharmacy
Learn more
- PDA responds to the NHS 10 Year Plan
- 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future
- Recognising excellence, representing members: Reflections from the House of Lords
- The expanding role of pharmacists and pharmacies in public health – and why they are being let down
- One in three pharmacists now Independent Prescribers – A significant milestone, but challenges persist
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