Consultations

We are committed to consulting our stakeholders on important matters and give you an opportunity to help shape how we operate. This section provides information about why we consult, details of our previous and current consultations, and our responses to external consultations.

What is consultation?

Consultation is a formal process for seeking the views of our stakeholders. Stakeholders are all those individuals and organisations who affect or are affected by our work, including:

• members of the public;
• patients;
• registrants;
• professional bodies and organisations;
• other regulators;
• government;
• educators and employers.

Why we consult

We believe it is important that the people affected by our work have a say in how we operate. Effective consultation is vital to help us to improve our work. It informs us and helps us to achieve our purpose of protecting and promoting patients and the public by assuring the maintenance and development of safe and effective pharmacy practice across Great Britain.

How we consult

As part of our commitment to good practice, our consultations are based on the Government Code of Practice on Consultation's seven principles:

1. When to consult. Formal consultation should take place at a stage when there is scope to influence the policy outcome.
2. Duration of consultation exercises. Consultations should normally last for at least 12 weeks with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible.
3. Clarity of scope and impact. Consultation documents should be clear about the consultation process, what is being proposed, the scope to influence and the expected costs and benefits of the proposals.
4. Accessibility of consultation exercises. Consultation exercises should be designed to be accessible to, and clearly targeted at, those people the exercise is intended to reach.
5. The burden of consultation. Keeping the burden of consultation to a minimum is essential if consultations are to be effective and if consultees' buy-in to the process is to be obtained.
6. Responsiveness of consultation exercises. Consultation responses should be analysed carefully and clear feedback should be provided to participants following the consultation.
7. Capacity to consult. Officials running consultations should seek guidance in how to run an effective consultation exercise and share what they have learned from the experience.

In this section

Current consultations

Here you can see our current consultations and can actively engage in responding to them.

Previous consultations

Look at our previous consultations, reports of the findings and our responses.

Our responses to consultations

Here you’ll find our responses to consultations  held by other organisations.

Have your say

You can also feed in your views at any time using the feedback form. We encourage as many people as possible to contribute their expertise to help shape our work for the future.