Regulation 66A: New NHS Prescribing Rules for Pharmacies

Previously I wrote about independent prescribing and what it means for supervision in your pharmacy, and there's a follow-on this week that's worth getting ahead of before it lands on 1 October, because it's not the loosening of the rules it might sound like from some of the coverage, it's the opposite.

The NHS (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2026 bring in a new regulation 66A, and what it actually does is restrict pharmacist independent prescribers from prescribing for a patient and then dispensing against their own prescription in the same pharmacy. Up to now that's sat with professional guidance and service specifications rather than the law itself, so if you've got an employed prescriber writing and then dispensing their own scripts, from 1 October there's a specific legal restriction on it for the first time, with only a narrow exception carved out.

To use the exception there your pharmacy also has to be providing a directed service the pharmacist is authorised to prescribe under in the first place, as well as a number of requirements that need to be met including SOPs. Presumably this will be supported with the suite of changes and documentation that expands Pharmacy First.

As a pharmacy inspector in an old life, the question I'd ask walking into a pharmacy doing this is whether the SOP actually describes what happens in practice, who does it, what gets recorded, and how the GP's agreement is captured and kept, rather than just referencing the regulation and assuming everyone knows what to do with it. That's usually where these things come unstuck, a paperwork trail that wouldn't survive someone asking about it six months on.

If you've got an employed independent prescriber, or you're thinking about employing one, worth checking now whether your governance arrangements would actually stand up against all of that, rather than finding out too late that the exception doesn't apply the way you assumed it did.

Community Pharmacy England: https://cpe.org.uk/our-news/new-regulations-to-support-prescribing-closures-for-learning-and-other-cpcf-changes/

Explanatory Memo: www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2026/961/pdfs/uksiem_20260961_en_001.pdf