Pharmacy Magazine Podcast – Talking Pharmacy 2026, Episode 8

Thanks, Richard.

So I'm going to start with a good week and it's a good week for the Royal College of Pharmacy as the UK Pharmacy Professional Leadership Advisory Board, the PPLAB, I'll be calling them from now on, has graciously handed over the baton to deliver on the group's recommendations.

So it's worthwhile considering how we got here.

So strap yourselves in.

So back in 2022, a long time ago, the UK chief pharmacist decided that the RPS wasn't doing a good enough job and decided to help or interfere, whichever way you look at it.

I don't know what their job specifications are but clearly their roles do extend to helping to mould a private membership body.

So their aim at the time, according to David Webb, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, who was just new in his role, was to produce a blueprint for the purpose and functions of a pharmacy professional leadership body to best develop support and deliver excellence in patient care and professional practice.

So quite rightly, at the time, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society held up its hands and said, well, that's us and we can do that and we'd like to continue doing it.

So the chief pharmaceutical officers then set up a commission with professional expertise from across pharmacy and beyond to consider the future of professional leadership.

So that then set about working over five working groups and it's worth noting I guess that I don't think these people were directly elected by any of the members of the RPS at the time.

So anyway, the commission produced eventually a report based on feedback it got.

So that feedback was from 463 attendees at webinars 1,243 separate online survey responses from individuals and pharmacy organisations.

And then that commission, are you still with us? Then the commission proposed the development of a collaborative pharmacy leadership council with an independent chair.

And that's where the UK PPLAB came into being in 2023. for a period of three years.

So now, 2026, the UK PPLAB has published a concordat and in that it has concluded, and this is a direct quote, that having unanimously agreed a way forward for pharmacy professional leadership, it should be for the professional leadership organisations themselves to own and deliver that future.

So the concordat sets out the details of an agreed approach to developing a new future for pharmacy professional leadership in the UK.

So there are lots of other pharmacy bodies involved, including the BPSE, the Pharmacy Forum Northern Ireland, the Association of Pharmacy Technicians, the British and Collier Pharmacy Association, College of Mental Health Pharmacy, PCPA and UKCPA.

So all these people agreed with the UK PPLEB statements and all was lovely.

And so the Concordat formalises an agreement between all these organisations with the new Royal College to implement the recommendations of the board.

And then there's more to this in that new kind of groups have been developed.

So we've got Apex now, which is an alliance of pharmacy expert groups.

And also there's been the creation of this other group, the CCLG, which is the co-creation liaison group.

And that will include APEX, which I've just mentioned, as well as APTUK and PFNI.

So the concordat reaffirms a three-stage process.

Won't go into details really, but part of that includes inviting APTUK members to be members of the Royal College.