Consultations

We are committed to consulting everyone with an interest in pharmacy, providing opportunities to feedback and help shape our work on important matters.

Find out about why we consult, details of our previous and current consultations, and our responses to external consultations.

What is a 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:

  • Patients, carers, users of pharmacy services and members of the public
  • pharmacists and pharmacy technicians
  • pharmacy owners
  • professional bodies and organisations
  • other regulators
  • governments
  • educators
  • 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 improve our work. It informs us and helps us to achieve our purpose of protecting, promoting and maintaining the health, safety and wellbeing of patients and members of the public by upholding standards and public trust in pharmacy.

How we consult

As part of our commitment to good practice, our consultations are based on the Cabinet Office Consultation principles guidance [PDF 56 KB]. This guidance helps us to decide when, with whom and how to consult.

Our statutory consultations are normally carried out for a period of 12 weeks. We often use a combination of formal and informal engagement, including online surveys, one-to-one meetings with key stakeholders, and focus groups with patients and the public.

The consultation process involves three distinct stages:

  • pre-consultation work (planning, testing, policy development)
  • launch and running of the consultation (press release, live survey, engagement events)
  • post-consultation work (analysis, reporting, publication, and follow-up work)

In line with the Equality Act 2010, we also produce Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs), to see if our consultation proposals may have an impact on people who share any of the protected characteristics.

Consultation activity   

Current consultations

Consultation on draft standards for Chief Pharmacists - have your say.

Previous consultations

Follow this link to see our previous consultations, our reports on the findings and our responses to the results.

Our responses to consultations

We respond to consultations which relate to pharmacy and healthcare more widely, and specifically when there is a potential impact on pharmacy professionals, pharmacy services, or our functions as a regulator. The consultations we respond to come from Governments and a variety of other organisations across England, Scotland and Wales. 

Our consultation responses reflect our policy or position on particular issues. Follow this link to read our responses to consultations.

On rare occasions, the organisation which has issued the consultation will ask us to keep the consultation document or our response confidential. In these cases, we do not publish our responses.