The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has said it is “committed to using the minimum regulatory intervention required” to ensure registered pharmacies in the UK meet its enforcement policy.

The policy, published on Friday, is aimed largely at pharmacy owners to make sure they provide safe services and fulfil the standards for registered pharmacies.

It also sets out the measures that are available to the regulator. The GPhC defines pharmacy owner as “registered pharmacies owned by an individual pharmacist, partnership or body corporate.”

Measures include implementing improvement action plans as the GPhC’s first response if one or more standards have not been met and there is no immediate risk to the public or patients. The action plan will set out what the pharmacy owner will do to meet the standards.

The GPhC said it can impose conditions on renewing a pharmacy premises’ entry and potentially revoke the conditions of registration.

The regulator also has legal powers to serve an improvement notice when its inspectors “have reasonable grounds for believing there is a failure to meet the standards for registered pharmacies or a failure to meet conditions relating to the standards.”

Other measures include disqualifying a pharmacy owner for failing to meet the standards and removing all premises entries from the register, removing one or more premises entries from the register or suspending one or more premises entries.

The GPhC, however, stressed it’s approach to its enforcement policy would be marked by proportionality, transparency and consistency in order “to support and encourage pharmacy owners to meet the standards for registered pharmacies.”

“We are committed to using the minimum regulatory intervention required to achieve the desired result, known as ‘right-touch’ regulation,” it said.

“This means we will use the minimum regulatory action required to ensure that pharmacy owners are meeting our standards.”

Picture: cnythzl (iStock)