General Pharmaceutical Council

Introduction

I am delighted to be able to welcome you to the latest e-bulletin and the first reporting news from the GPhC and the GPhC Council as a legally constituted group after they met last week in public for the first time. At this meeting the Council agreed revised drafts of four sets of standards for a further, GPhC consultation, following on from the consultation held through the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE).

I encourage you to take a look at the proposals and let us know if you think we’ve got it right, it could be that you agree or disagree with the proposals or it may be that you think there are better ways of achieving the stated aims and objectives. Finally, you may wish to identify new or different areas of concern. Whatever your thoughts, we would very much like to hear them.

May I also take this opportunity to remind you that the consultation on draft legislative rules ends on 4 May 2010. If you’ve not yet had an opportunity to respond to the consultation you have only a couple of weeks remaining. The consultation is set up so you need only respond to the rules which interest or affect you if you choose to make it easier for you to respond.

As always things are very busy as we work toward setting a date for the transfer of regulation to the GPhC. I hope to be able to bring you an update on this in the May e-bulletin following council discussions.

Finally, What does professionalism mean to you? Recently I set out my views on what professionalism means in a comment piece for a pharmacy magazine. You can read the full article here if you are interested. 

Duncan Rudkin
Chief Executive

GPhC begins further consultation on standards

Yesterday marked the beginning of a further period of public consultation on four draft sets of regulatory standards.

The GPhC Council took the decision to approve the revised drafts for a further six week consultation period at its first public meeting last Wednesday. The redrafting of the four pharmacy standards followed receipt of comments from a wide variety of stakeholders on the standards sent out for consultation through the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) in December last year. The six week GPhC consultation builds on the CHRE's, twelve week consultation period.

The standards issued in revised form for public consultation are:

• Conduct, ethics and performance
• Continuing professional development
• Education and training for pharmacy technicians
• Owners, superintendents and pharmacy professionals in positions of authority.

Some of the draft standards are proposed as short term standards. This will allow us time to carry out further work on important issues while continuing to protect the health and safety of patients and the public. The GPhC will be publishing plans for an extensive standards development programme, which will set out how the GPhC intend to take forward some of the complex and challenging issues raised in the consultation so far.

In the meantime, in order to enable the public and registrants to know where they stand on day one of GPhC regulation and all registrants, stakeholder groups and interested parties are encouraged to read the revised standards and respond to the consultation by the closing date of Friday 28 May 2010. The consultation is being conducted via the GPhC website www.pharmacyregulation.org.

Rules consultation closes 4 May

The GPhC is seeking views on its draft rules. Five sets of draft rules – which set out the detail of key regulatory functions - are available for consultation until 4 May 2010. As well as the draft rules themselves and the consultation documents, equality impact assessments have been published for each set of draft rules.

The five included in this consultation are those which need to be in place to enable the GPhC to open:
• Fees for 2010
• Registration
• Appeals
• Statutory Committees and their Advisers
• Fitness to Practise.

To view the rules consultation documents, and send your comments, visit our website www.pharmacyregulation.org.

Following the consultation, the rules will be subject to parliamentary and Privy Council processes, prior to the opening date and transfer of regulation to the GPhC.
A separate consultation on the 2011 fees will take place in the next few months. An equality impact assessment on these draft rules will be published during the consultation.

Council meeting update

Last week the GPhC Council met in public for the first time. The meeting was held from 9:30 until 4pm at 129 Lambeth Rd. The agenda and papers from the April meeting can be found here.

Meetings of the full Council are open to the public, except in occasional circumstances when a session may be deemed to be confidential. Space is limited so please notify us in advance if you wish to attend a meeting.

The papers for each meeting will be published within the week prior to the Council meeting. You can view the agenda and papers for an upcoming meeting and minutes will be published a week after meetings.

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday 19 May 2010.