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Community Pharmacy England's director of NHS services Alastair Buxton gave embattled pharmacy owners across the country little reason to believe the funding black hole, which could be as big as £2.7 billion and threatens to ruin their sector, will be closed any time soon after admitting he had no idea when that might happen.

Buxton told the Sigma conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, via video link that it was not clear when or if the Government would give community pharmacy another increase in its global sum having taken its annual contractual funding for 2025-26 to £3.073 billion in March.

Talks on 2026-27 pharmacy funding are expected to take place in September but those discussions largely hinge on Labour's spending review which is expected to be published in the summer and will underpin its 10-year plan for the NHS.

CPE and the Government portrayed the 2025-26 deal as very positive, with pharmacy's negotiating body describing it as "the largest uplift in funding across the whole of the NHS" and Labour calling it a "record funding deal".

Failed to ease pharmacy owners' concerns

However, that failed to ease the concerns of pharmacy owners who are struggling to keep their businesses open as operating costs rise and overall funding for the sector falling significantly short as exposed by the independent economic review that was commissioned by NHS England.

When asked how quickly that gap might be closed, Buxton said: "We can't put a timeline on it other than to say that clearly, everybody wants it to be sorted as soon as possible. The next few weeks are going to be critical in the Government overall, not just in healthcare, with the finalisation of the three-year spending review.

"If you talk to anybody in Government, even the prime minister, (they) will say 'I can't commit until that spending review is sorted'. And that will be linked very closely to whatever is going to be in the 10-year NHS plan that will determine how much money is going to be redeployed potentially for secondary care to primary care, which will hopefully benefit us. So there are unfortunately a lot of unknowns at the moment."

Avicenna chair: Why should we have gateway criteria if there's no funding?

The Avicenna chairman Salim Jetha told the conference that pharmacies should not have to jump through red tape to access much-needed funding, such as pharmacy quality scheme payments. The scheme has £30 million in funding available but pharmacy owners will not be able to claim payment unless they meet the gateway criterion.

Under the scheme, they must sign up to deliver Pharmacy First and the pharmacy contraception service by August 31 this year and remain registered for both services until March 31, 2026, as well as meeting other requirements. Jetha said: "Should there be a gateway criteria if there's no funding and we can't do anything else?"

In response, Fin McCaul, a regional representative on CPE's committee, said: "When we looked at it from the negotiating committee, we've been really clear to the Government 'you've a basket of goods that you want to purchase and you can't afford all of them. And so, you need to make a decision about what your priority is.

"'And if you want to enable us to do more,you have to deal with the red tape, reduce the red tape and you have to make it easier for us to do those things'. If we were trying to negotiate the contract now given the environment we're in, with the cuts to NHS England and the ICBs, it might have been a different outcome."

McCaul defended the 2025-26 settlement and insisted it represented significant progress in pharmacy funding but said the shortfall highlighted by the cost of providing pharmaceutical services alongside current funding levels needed to be addressed.

"Going forward, we're really clear that pharmacy has provided a huge value in what we've delivered. That's reflected in the conversations we've had, the biggest rise and the biggest investment in pharmacy in all of primary care and indeed, in secondary care," he said.

"I appreciate we needed much more and that was a really challenging conversation that we had but it puts us in a good place because we've delivered value. I'm hopeful that this will continue in the setiments that the Government have given back to us."