The Scottish Government is ‘struggling to balance the books’ and its national finance teams are “tightening the purse strings,” Community Pharmacy Scotland’s chief executive Matt Barclay has warned contractors. 

In an update on negotiations earlier this week, Mr Barclay said the devolved governments budgets are “even more stretched” than last year, causing funding talks for 2024-25 to drag on.

“This is not helpful for CPS members already experiencing increasing costs and looking for certainty to support investment in their businesses,” he said. 

Mr Barclay said his negotiating team strives to maintain a good working relationship with its government interlocutors and that the current talks, while delayed, “remain constructive”. 

But he added: “With every negotiation you have to be prepared to walk away and illustrate the consequences of not being able to reach an agreement.

“In community pharmacy’s case, insufficient funding could lead to a reduction in the ability of contractors to provide services.

“No one wants this, but it is the reality that is understood on both sides of the negotiating table.”

He said the need to provide a detailed evidence base during negotiations has become more pressing: “As funding becomes tighter the justification for funding (in terms of costs and extra resource) becomes more acute.”

CPS “intensely models” a number of scenarios and uses this to “build proactive proposals,” said Mr Barclay.  

He said the government negotiators “believe it or not, want the same as we do – they want a vibrant community pharmacy network that is enabled to deliver top-class services to patients while being a vital clog in the NHS primary care ecosystem”.

In May 2023, CPS rejected the Scottish Government’s proposed funding package, finding that the reimbursement and remuneration were not acceptable. That August, the negotiator accepted a 2023-24 deal that increased the global sum by six per cent to £299.5m.