Local News

Government legislation has now been passed to create two new Northamptonshire unitary councils serving the areas of North and West Northamptonshire.

 

These two new councils will start providing services to the residents and businesses of Northamptonshire in April and two Health and Wellbeing Boards will be created, one for each of the new unitary councils.

 

The aim of the Health and Wellbeing Board is to secure:

 

In doing so, the Health and Wellbeing Board brings together the NHS, local councils, the Police and other services.

 

The Health and Wellbeing Board for both Councils will be under a statutory obligation to draft, consult upon and publish a pharmaceutical needs assessment in accordance with the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013, as amended, by 1 April 2022.  Work started in the summer of 2020 in order to meet this duty with the assistance of Primary Care Commissioning Community Interest Company (PCC).

 

The pharmaceutical needs assessment assists NHS England and NHS Improvement in determining applications by pharmacies and dispensing appliance contractors for new, additional or relocated premises, changes to opening hours or the provision of more pharmaceutical services.

 

Whilst not falling within the legal definition of ‘pharmaceutical services’, there may be services currently commissioned by Northamptonshire County Council or NHS Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group that inform the conclusions reached in this process and may assist those organisations in considering their commissioning intentions of other local services from pharmacies.

 

As part of this process, the Health and Wellbeing Board is conducting a consultation process on the draft pharmaceutical needs assessments and seeks your views on the documents.

 

 

Please give us your views by completing our online questionnaire for either North or West Northamptonshire:

 

The consultation closes at midnight on Sunday 21 March 2021.