Interview: New NPA vice chair on achieving ‘advocacy and a real voice’ for pharmacy

The Pharmacist sits down with newly elected vice chair of the National Pharmacy Association and independent pharmacy contractor Sukhi Basra about what she hopes to achieve in her new leadership role and the support she believes the sector requires to ensure a more stable and clinically focused future.

It was five minutes before the midnight deadline when Ms Basra decided to submit her application to the NPA board just two years ago. While initially concerned she would not be capable, or have the capacity, Ms Basra wanted to bring her voice to the table – as an owner of one small pharmacy and as a woman in the profession.

Having become the second woman to join the NPA’s board in 2023, it was announced in April 2025 that Ms Basra had been elected as the first-ever female vice chair.

It is her mission as vice chair, she said, to ‘achieve greater advocacy in community pharmacy’ and ‘a real voice’ for the sector.

‘I want community pharmacy to be the conversation at the coffee table in the coffee shops – the way the post office scandal was a conversation everybody was talking about. I want everybody to know [about community pharmacy],’ said Ms Basra.

Having qualified in 1996 from De Montford University, Ms Basra has been serving her community in Victoria in Central London for 27 years. At her CliniChem Pharmacy in Victoria, London, she said she would see between 100 to 200 patients a day, ‘at least’.

And sometimes she and her team – which includes her husband and superintendent pharmacist Sukhjinder Basra, independent prescribing pharmacist Helen Yohannes and pharmacy technician Zaneta Dobias – could see more than 50 patients coming in all at once.

‘It never stops. We can take a 10-minute break, but I'll take a bite out of my sandwich and someone will turn up. It doesn't stop,’ she said.

‘And if I kept my doors open for longer, they'd keep coming if they knew I was open.’

‘We’ve got 10 years of cuts to catch up with’

Like many among the sector, Ms Basra has serious concerns around the funding mechanisms within community pharmacy – including her monthly bill of £60,000-£70,000 on medicines that isn’t paid back by the government until three months later, and at a price that may have changed.

And she warned that aside from a 19p uplift to the dispensing fee, the recently agreed £3bn pharmacy contract lacked ‘new money’ to support the sector.

‘Yes, we were given an uplift, but actually we were short by 40% to begin with,’ explained Ms Basra, referring to analysis which suggests the sector has faced real terms cuts of 40% over the past decade.

‘So, we were far behind compared to everybody else, including GPs. Our catching up is much further than it needs to be, and that's really unfair.

‘We've got 10 years of cuts that we have to catch up with.’

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Pharmacists need business education

The situation is also particularly difficult for new pharmacists entering the community, who Ms Basra felt were not taught level of understanding needed around the pharmacy contract or business during university.

‘We’re great scientific nerds. We're analytical, we're risk averse. But what we don't know is, how much we actually do get paid?

‘How long does it take for us to get paid for our medicines that we dispense out? How much cash flow do we need to be able to make it work, how to get a loan out, there are lots of pharmacies that have them.

‘You need help that's not taught to us, and I do think that's something that universities need to look at in order for pharmacies to stay viable. We need that business education.’

Instead, pharmacists ‘learn a really hard way’, she said.

‘We learn by getting loans. We get overdrafts. All of us have got overdrafts. I know of contractors in my role that have said they have taken out a remortgage on their home to carry on and to pay the bill for next month because they can't get any more credit from my bank. That's not fair.’

A more clinical future

While Ms Basra sees the future of community pharmacy as more ‘clinically focused’ and believes the sector should ‘take up the challenge about being more clinical’, she stressed this could only be done with the support of the government.

‘If they are going to shift us and want us to do more clinical, they’ve got to somehow back us up financially to be able to not focus on dispensing,’ she added.

‘We all want to do clinical, but we want time for it.’

Ms Basra’s pharmacy offers several clinical services, including Pharmacy First, hypertension and contraception services.

But she says ‘the biggest barrier’ was ‘lack of awareness’ among patients.

‘There isn't an awareness out there around what pharmacists do,’ she explained.

‘We have to be our own advocates. We have to sort of donate that information when a patient comes in.’

Prescribing

With changes coming in next year that will see all newly qualified pharmacists become independent prescribers, Ms Basra said it was vital that a role opened up within community pharmacy to use this qualification.

Ms Bara and her colleague Helen Yohannes are both independent prescribing pharmacists but ‘it’s not being utilised’ in the community, she said.

‘There's no pathway for me and Helen to provide NHS [prescribing] services for hypertension, blood pressure, diabetes, weight-loss, all of these things – we have no access to be able to write an NHS prescription, even though we're both qualified.

‘There is 20 years under Helen's belt and 27 under my belt, but there is no streamlined system that utilises that skill set.’

Calls have been made in recent weeks to expand the Pharmacy First service in England – with the NPA pointing to the success of the scheme in Scotland, which treats more conditions.

Ms Basra said an expansion would be welcomed as long as pharmacists are ‘recognised as clinicians’ because current PGDs used under the scheme are ‘very restrictive’.

‘If you recognise us as to be able to prescribe everything except for morphine, then surely I have the competency to know what that patient really needs.

‘And those are far smaller criteria of my medical knowledge – being an IP – than some of the other things that I do on a day-to-day basis.’

She added: ‘So yes, by all means, expand Pharmacy First, but give all the control to the pharmacist and let them make those clinical decisions of what actually that patient needs if it's a minor ailment.

‘We are a risk averse profession. We don't like to do things that we think might be dangerous. So, if we don't feel we're competent enough to prescribe, we won't and if it's outside our PGD, we can't. So why not make that more flexible?’

ARRS

One day a week, Ms Basra works in the GP practice in which the pharmacy sits as a respiratory lead – running a clinic in tandem with an ANP. She also previously worked as a primary care network (PCN) lead in Hertfordshire some years ago.

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It was her view that the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme – used by PCNs to employ and reimburse the costs of pharmacists and other staff to work across GP practices – should be introduced into community pharmacy.

Pharmacists continue to be a popular ARRS hire in PCNs, although in recent months it appears the pace of recruitment has plateaued and in some cases the number of those in post is even starting to fall.

‘I'm a great advocate of the fact that ARRS should have been introduced into community pharmacy as well,’ Ms Basra told The Pharmacist.

‘All the roles that community pharmacists are doing in GP practices, they should be done in a community pharmacy.

‘A structured medicine review can be done in your pharmacy, because we were doing reviews and we know the patients better than anybody else.’

As an ARRS pharmacist working in the community, they would know what drugs work for their patients, the side effects they can have and when they should be reviewed, noted Ms Basra.

It’s been argued in the past that the introduction of the ARRS has caused staffing challenges within community pharmacy – with pharmacists switching sectors for more flexible working hours and to have greater use of independent prescribing qualifications.

Representing women

As Ms Basra takes on her next venture as vice chair of the NPA, she pledged to help ensure the voice of those on the frontline – and the challenges they face – were heard at the highest level.

‘I feel like that voice is really important at the tables of the board, and that's why I came along.

‘I thought, actually, there are lots of people at that table with lots of experience and I need to learn from them, but I also should be proud enough to be able to articulate what's really happening on the frontline and how it's impacting the everyday contractor – whether that’s a pharmacy owner who might be very young, who's just come out and taken a loan and bought one, or who might have been doing it for longer than me, 30 years, 40 years and who's slogging away and can't understand why they don't have enough for a pension.

‘I thought the only way I could do that is if I actually have a seat at that table. So that's why I joined the NPA.’

As a woman, Ms Basra said she also saw things ‘very differently’ and that this was an important perspective to have on the board.

‘I think it's slightly different when you're a female pharmacist. A lot of the sector is made up of female pharmacists, and they have to manage both family life and the business. They work on the front line, but they don't necessarily own as many pharmacies.’

They ‘are the faces of the sector’ she said, but previously the leadership has not always been there.

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The NPA board of 13 members currently has four women and Ms Basra said there was ‘not a barrier for more women to come’.

The association has seen the value in having more female representation and ‘my endorsement from them has given me confidence’, she added.

Pharmacy must be seen as primary care

With a clinical future in mind, Ms Basra said it was vital that the sector got its ‘voice across’ and helped ministers and leaders recognise ‘that we are such an asset’.

‘We are not competitors with the other multidisciplinary teams. I work with nurses, district nurses, advanced nurse practitioners, carers, social prescribers, the receptionists, everybody – it's almost like, can you please recognise this is primary care?

‘Because when people think primary care, they only think GPs. Primary means first port of call. Well, actually, the first port of call is your pharmacist.’

We need our patients advocating

While it is important for the sector to show it has ‘a voice’, it is perhaps even more vital that patients understood the pressures facing pharmacists, said Ms Basra.

‘My biggest thing is we need our public sector – we need our patient advocating. They need to know what we do, and they're the ones that need to be shouting to the MPs saying: “You will not shut down my pharmacy. I need my pharmacist”.’