The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) will work more collaboratively with other professional regulators as part of its new five year strategy, chief executive Duncan Rudkin has revealed.

The strategy, which is due to be launched 'soon', will set out key themes including collaboration and integration.

This is intended to recognise that this is how care is 'increasingly' being provided and how 'regulation needs to work', Mr Rudkin said during a virtual speech given at the Sigma Conference 2025 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

'The days are gone, if they have already existed, where the pharmacy regulator could sit on its own and achieve useful, meaningful change. We need to work with others,' he said.

Related Article: Royal College of Pharmacy needs to ‘excite and interest’ current non-members

'That includes pharmacy leadership bodies, representative and trade bodies, but it also particularly includes a wide range of other regulators.'

This could include the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which is the regulator for GP surgeries and hospitals, as well as the regulators of other professions and even non-healthcare regulators like the Food Standards Agency, Mr Rudkin suggested.

The GPhC chief also hinted at the possibility that different professional regulators may seek to align their standards.

'When we're looking at increasingly integrated teams delivering care, it's going to make less and less sense for individual professional groups to be working to what appear to be, or may actually be, different standards,' he said.

Mr Rudkin also suggested that different regulators with overlapping jurisdictions could potentially take responsibility for enforcing each others' standards.

He said the GPhC was considering 'how one regulator can potentially underpin and enforce this regulatory standard set by another, [and] who's best placed to do what'.

'There are more regulatory challenges around than there are necessarily resources hanging on trees to deal with them... it's about working smarter,' he added.

In particular, he said the GPhC wanted to 'systematically identify where there are gaps or overlaps'.

Related Article: Community pharmacists report higher stress levels than those in general practice

'Both can be dangerous in different ways,' Mr Rudkin said.

And he suggested pharmacy owners might feel they were navigating a 'fragmented regulatory landscape'.

'I think that needs a lot more joint communication, a lot more joint messaging, as well as joint regulatory activity, a much more joined-up approach to enforcement,' he said.

Mr Rudkin also said the GPhC would be looking at how it could 'support innovation in the most effective way, so that people who are receiving care services in ways that are novel or emerging can have confidence in them'.

Related Article: Financial impact of contract must be calculated, NPA urges 

'That's about making sure the workforce is confident and competent to deliver... But equally, it's about the systems and processes within which they're working,' Mr Rudkin added.

And he said the regulator wanted pharmacists to 'feel confident in upholding the standards in ways which work for their patients but also support their own wellbeing as well'.

The GPhC has recently said it has 'taken statutory enforcement action against some registered pharmacies supplying medicines that have been prescribed by prescribers working for unregulated online platforms'.