See the key legislation which sets out our role and our regulatory powers.
Supplying medicines is a fundamental healthcare service. To keep people safe and maintain the right environment for care, pharmacy premises must be registered with us, meet our standards and have its registration renewed every year.
A business or organisation must register a physical premises as a pharmacy if they intend to:
- sell pharmacy medicines (known as P medicines)
- supply P medicines or Prescription Only Medicines (POMs) on prescription, which require the product to be labelled for a specific patient as a dispensed medicine
- supply P medicines or POMs on prescription written by veterinary practitioners for the treatment of animals under the ‘cascade’, which means that if no suitable veterinary medicine is authorised in the UK, the veterinary surgeon responsible can use professional judgement
The Medicines Act 1968 is the legislation that requires premises to be registered with us. To join our register, a business or organisation must be able to run the proposed pharmacy premises safely and effectively in a way that meets our standards for registered pharmacies. We’ll also ask you to provide evidence of this when a pharmacy changes ownership or re-joins the register.
To stay on our register, you’ll need to renew your pharmacy premises registration every year.
Key legislation
Pharmacy registration
If you’re intending to supply pharmacy or prescription only medicines, find out all you need to know to register a pharmacy
Renewal
You must renew your pharmacy premises registration every year to continue trading. Find out what you need to do to renew.
Managing the pharmacy's registration
If the pharmacy changes ownership, superintendent, or the services it provides, make sure it continues to operate legally.