Rebalancing board is ‘not actively considering’ supervision, says chair

The Rebalancing Medicines Legislation and Pharmacy Regulation Programme Board is currently “not actively considering” pharmacy supervision, Ken Jarrold, the board’s chair, has said.

Jarrold’s comments came in a statement outlining minor amendments to proposed changes in the legislation around the role of Responsible Pharmacists and dispensing errors following a consultation process.

The double consultation, which received 632 responses, proposed to extend the new defence for dispensing errors from community pharmacists to other parts of the profession, as well as clarifying the roles of both Responsible Pharmacists and superintendent pharmacists.

But Jarrold said responses to the consultation included “issues and concerns which were not linked to the proposals”.

“The topic of supervision and remote supervision was one of these,” he said.

“I therefore want to be clear that the board is focused on progressing the two draft Section 60 Orders that we consulted on, which will not change any of the requirements around transactional governance, and that the board is not actively considering supervision at this time.”

Supervision is set to be consulted on separately in various parts of the sector, with the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK consulting its members between November 2018 and January 2019.

Following the consultation responses, the board said it would make two changes to its proposals before taking the draft legislation forward.

These include “making clear that the superintendent pharmacist duty relates only to the retail pharmacy business”, and “removing ‘handling’ from the activities that trigger a need for a [responsible pharmacist] to be in charge of the premises”.

Jarrold added that limited “access to lawyers and parliamentary time” owing to Brexit was likely to delay passing the legislation.

But he said: “We have been reassured that officials in the Department of Health and Social Care will seek to progress the legislation as quickly as possible.”