St Helens Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment 2022-2025 Consultation

You are invited to take part in the St Helens Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) 2022-2025 consultation. Community pharmacies are one of the most frequented health care settings in England and play an important role in community health.

A PNA is a document which records the assessment of the need for pharmaceutical services within a specific area. As such, it sets out a statement of the pharmaceutical services which are currently provided, together with when and where these are available to a given population. The same regulations require NHS England to use the PNA to consider applications to open a new pharmacy, move an existing pharmacy or to commission additional services from a pharmacy.

The statutory responsibility to produce PNAs is held by Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWB) which are hosted by local authorities. St Helens People’s Board (which incorporates the Health and Wellbeing Board and Community Safety Partnership) is developing a new PNA as set out under the NHS (Pharmaceutical Services and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013 No. 349).

A PNA Steering Group has been established to oversee the development. This group includes members from partner organisations, Healthwatch and the Local Pharmaceutical Committee.

As part of the development process, the regulations require that the HWB undertakes a formal consultation on a draft of its PNA.

The key outcomes for this consultation are:

• To encourage constructive feedback from a variety of stakeholders
• To ensure a wide range of primary care health professionals provide opinions and views on what is contained within the PNA

Taking this into account, they would like to invite you to participate in this consultation, which will run until 31st August 2022.

The draft PNA and consultation questionnaire can be found on our website using the following link: https://www.sthelens.gov.uk/pna

If you require a paper copy of the PNA or consultation questionnaire, please contact the St Helens Borough Council Contact Centre on 01744 676789. www.sthelens.gov.uk

All feedback received by close of play on 31st August 2022 will be collated and presented to the PNA Steering Group, for consideration on behalf of the St Helens People’s Board. A consultation report will be included within the final PNA document. This will provide an overview of the feedback received and set out how the comments have been acted upon. An updated PNA including consultation process and responses will be presented to the St Helens People’s Board and published in October 2022.