Agenda item

Dr Mayada Abu Affan (Interim Director of Public Health) gave a brief introduction of H&F Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) 2026-29. She said that every three years, all Health and Wellbeing Boards were statutorily required to publish and regularly update a PNA for their borough. PNA aimed to assist decisions related to community pharmacies noting their additional input to prevention now helped reduce the demand on primary and urgent care. PNA helped the Board to manage the risks in terms of equitable access across the borough as a result of opening new pharmacies and closure or relocation of existing ones.  

Susan Hughes (Programme Lead, Public Health) presented the PCN findings. She shared the concerns raised at a recent survey and remarked that the H&F Commission would improve access and experience by addressing opening hours, stock issues and communications on prescriptions readiness among GP, pharmacies and patients. She said that a PNA dashboard would be developed to monitor the trends by logging locations, opening hours and services of pharmacies and the feedback received for each of them. Susan concluded that the LBHF was well served in relation to the number and location of pharmacies and there was a good access to necessary and other relevant pharmaceutical services, with no current or anticipated gaps in provision during 2026-2029.

Sue Spiller (Chief Executive Officer, SOBUS) was concerned about the range of pharmaceutical services that were being taken up by residents.   Susan Hughes noted that upon request, a list of available pharmaceutical services had been provided to families visiting Family Hubs. She understood from the survey that some cohorts such as carers might not be aware that local pharmacies did deliver prescriptions and so on. She believed there were some scopes to improve the dissemination of relevant information on the “Pharmacy First” service.

Dr Mayada Abu Affan explained that NHS England which commissioned the pharmaceutical services had the data on the range of services taken up by residents.  The Council only received data on the public health services it commissioned to pharmacies and hence there were no sufficient data to assess the impact of pharmaceutical services in reducing primary care demand.

Dr James Cavanagh (H&F GP) noted that the “Pharmacy First” service was commissioned by NHS England and widely broadcast/advertised through GP surgeries and that a large cohort of pharmacists in H&F had joined GP practices through national funding on workforce diversity.  He considered it useful to map the number of pharmacists within the Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to understand the supply and service gaps, if any, in the PCNs. Dr Cavanagh sought details about pharmacists delivering medication to people’s homes or working with nursing homes, and the number of prescribing pharmacists in each PCNs. These data would help the Board to understand whether the community was being served with proper access and quality of pharmaceutical services. Dr Mayada Abu Affan considered the issue raised by Dr Cavanagh was very important and could be done in parallel to the PNA.

ACTION: Susan Hughes

The Chair said the report reflected the importance of pharmacies as an extension of health services providing personal human touch in the increasingly digital world. She expected the current pace of changes might warrant an update of the PCN within the next three years.

RESOLVED

That the Board agreed to

1. Approve the Hammersmith and Fulham Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) 2026- 2029 for publication; and

2.    Delegate authority to the PNA Steering Group to determine whether future changes in pharmaceutical services are minor (requiring only a supplementary statement) or sufficiently significant to warrant a new PNA within the next three years, and to report these decisions to the Health and Wellbeing Board.