Independent prescribing and what it means for your pharmacy
From September 2026, every newly qualified pharmacist will be registered as an independent prescriber from the day they join the GPhC register. That is not a small administrative change. It is the biggest shift in what a pharmacist is trained to do since I qualified.
For years, independent prescribing was something you trained for after registration, usually after a couple of years of practice, through a separate GPhC accredited course with a designated prescribing practitioner supervising you along the way. Now it is built into the initial education and training itself. Foundation trainees starting from 2025 are being assessed on prescribing competencies as part of their foundation year, and they will walk out of registration already able to prescribe within their competence, including controlled drugs, for any condition within their scope of practice.
I am seeing the effect of this everywhere I look, and not just in the new graduates. More established pharmacists are asking about independent prescribing training too, often because they can see the direction the profession is moving and do not want to be left behind. Community pharmacy contracts are starting to build in prescribing led clinical services, NHS England has pathfinder programmes specifically testing prescribing models in community settings, and patients are increasingly going to expect it as part of what a pharmacist does, not an unusual extra.
This is a good thing for the profession. It closes a gap that has existed for a long time between what pharmacists are clinically capable of and what they have actually been allowed to do. But it also raises the stakes on the governance side, and this is where I think a lot of pharmacies are underprepared.
If you are bringing a newly qualified independent prescriber into your team, or supporting an existing pharmacist through prescribing training, you need supervision arrangements that are properly documented, not just informally agreed. A designated prescribing practitioner has real responsibilities, and if an inspector asks to see how that supervision is structured and recorded, a vague answer will not hold up. The same goes for scope of practice. An independent prescriber can prescribe within their competence, but competence has to be demonstrable, not assumed, and your governance arrangements need to reflect exactly what your prescribers are and are not doing in your pharmacy.
I have seen inspections where a pharmacy had brought in prescribing capability with good intentions but had not updated a single governance document to reflect it. The clinical competence was there. The paper trail was not. That gap is exactly the kind of thing that turns a good inspection into a difficult one.
If you are working through what independent prescribing means for your governance arrangements, whether that is preparing for a newly qualified prescriber joining your team or reviewing supervision structures for someone already in training, this is exactly the kind of thing I help pharmacies get right before an inspector asks the question first. Feel free to get in touch if you want a second pair of eyes on it.
Read More:
GPhC's official advice for newly qualified prescribing pharmacists (published 10 June 2026):
https://www.pharmacyregulation.org/about-us/news-and-updates/gphc-publishes-advice-newly-qualified-prescribing-pharmacistsNHS England's "Becoming an Independent Prescriber" page (background on the foundation training changes):
https://www.hee.nhs.uk/pharmacy/transforming-pharmacy-education-training/initial-education-training-pharmacists-reform-programme/pharmacy-integration-programme-super/becomingip-2
