Enforcement action

Our overall approach is to support and encourage pharmacy owners to meet the standards for registered pharmacies.

We have a number of different enforcement options available to us to secure compliance with our standards. These range from improvement action plans to statutory enforcement powers including improvement notices and conditions on registered pharmacy premises.

We use our statutory enforcement powers in situations when a pharmacy owner does not complete an improvement action plan and carry out the necessary changes to make sure our standards are met, or in situations when there is a serious risk to patient safety.

See our enforcement policy  [PDF 255 KB] which supports consistent decision-making for registered pharmacies and sets out the approach and principles we follow when using our enforcement options.

New Pharmacy Inspections website

We have now launched our new pharmacy inspections website, where for the first time we are publishing inspection reports, improvement action plans, enforcement notices; as well as anonymised short examples of excellent, good and poor practice. To find out more visit: https://inspections.pharmacyregulation.org