Pharmacies (Hansard, 5 November 2003)

§ Ms Rosie Winterton

[holding answer 30 October 2003]: The information requested is not held centrally. However, as at March 2002, out of a total of 9,756 national health service community pharmacies in England, 1,524, or 15.6 per cent., received payment for extended opening hours either before 0900 hours or after 1730 hours on Monday to Saturday (or after 1300 hours on an early closing day). 4,015, or 41.2 per cent., received payment for opening on Sundays or on public holidays.

We are currently consulting on a range of measures to modernise the regulatory system which governs whether or not a community pharmacy can dispense NHS prescriptions. As well as maintaining and improving access to pharmacies in all our communities and continuing to raise standards for patients, the aim is to make the system more business friendly, to provide more certainty and reliability for the companies who depend on it and to make the process less time-consuming. The measures include a proposal to exempt from the current restrictions applications from pharmacies which intend to open more than 100 hours a week, provided they provide a full and prescribed range of services, appropriate to local needs, determined by the NHS primary care trust. Full details are given in the consultation document, "Proposals to reform and modernise the NHS (Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 1992", published on 29 August 2003 and available on the Department's website at www.doh.gov.uIc/pharmacyregulationconsultation.

Comments can be sent, by 21 November 2003, to Peter Dunlevy, Pharmacy and Prescriptions Branch, Department of Health, Room 155 Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW 1A 2NS or e-mailed to peter.dunlevy@doh.gsi.gov.uk.