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The General Pharmaceutical Council has announced plans to explore whether “additional regulatory powers” are needed in order to “strengthen assurance of pharmacy ownership and accountability”.

In its newly published 2025-30 delivery plan, the regulator said it hopes to have carried out this work – which appears to be inspired by pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock’s recent comments in parliament around the need to “deal more quickly with pharmacies that do not play by the rules” – between now and the end of the five-year cycle. 

The GPhC also said it plans to have carried out “at least 2,000” pharmacy inspections by the end of the 2025-26 financial year, a target it aims to carry on meeting in each year up to 2030. 

Other goals the GPhC wishes to meet by the end of the current financial year include developing “additional routes for engagement with pharmacy owners” other than inspections, such as sharing learning with contractors, in order to ensure that “regulatory contact” is “regular and proportionate”. 

In subsequent years it aims to publish new standards for premises and to use inspection data to “track trends in pharmacy performance” and “identify risk earlier”.

The wide-ranging delivery plan also encompasses goals around education and training, speeding up fitness to practise timelines, working more closely with other health regulators and delivering cost savings of £1.5m by 2027-28, among numerous other ambitions. 

The regulator’s 2025-26 goals for education include developing a revised quality assurance approach for universities whose courses it accredits, launching a student experience survey and reviewing the routes to UK registration for pharmacists with international qualifications. 

In 2026-27 the GPhC aims to seek the sector’s views on proposed “improvements” to the common registration exam (with a view to launching the new assessment model by 2028), publish new professional standards for pharmacy technicians and make sure that education providers “share performance and inclusion data”. 

On fitness to practise, the GPhC seeks to bring its open caseload down from 1,500 to 1,200 by April 2026, by which deadline it also plans to publish a new enforcement strategy with “clear benchmarks, priorities and delivery milestones”.

Other immediate goals include assessing the feasibility of “rerouting service-level complaints outside regulatory oversight”. 

GPhC chair Gisela Abbam said: “This delivery plan is guided by our purpose to protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the public.

“It is about action, and what we are doing to deliver our core regulatory responsibilities, as well as dealing with potential future challenges and opportunities.  

“Pharmacy is evolving rapidly. While the delivery plan sets out a clear direction, it is also adaptable to ensure we are responsive and proactive to change, so that what we deliver is relevant and effective in all the nations we regulate.”

Interim GPhC chief executive Chris Askew commented: “Our strategy sets out how the GPhC will uphold safety, quality and public trust in pharmacy. This plan shows how we will deliver that strategy in a time of significant change across England, Wales and Scotland.

“It focuses on what matters to patients, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and pharmacy owners, and explains how registrants’ fees are being used responsibly to strengthen regulation, by improving support, driving greater consistency and investing in the areas that make the biggest difference to safety and public confidence.

“Above all, it is about accountability, highlighting the progress we are making and the impact it is having.” 

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