Notification of Temporary Closure and Temporary Suspension of Services

If you are unable to provide pharmaceutical services, for any reason, you must ensure that your Unplanned Closure procedure is followed, and that NHS England and NHS Improvement is notified of any time the pharmacy is closed.

For any unscheduled closure, the pharmacy is required to complete an Unplanned temporary suspension of services form and return it to the following email address  syicb.syprimarycare@nhs.net.

The Unplanned temporary suspension of services form should be returned to the above email address as soon as possible, but no later than 2 days following the closure. Please include as much information as possible about the closure; the reason for it, the actions taken by the pharmacy to mitigate the situation and an expected return to full service provision (if still affected at the time of notification).

If the pharmacy has been (or will be) closed for longer than 24 hours, please contact the Primary Care Team at the above email address as a matter of urgency, giving a telephone number so that we can contact you on in order that we can advise accordingly on next steps

NOTE-  the guidance above is relevant for closures at any time (including unavoidable delayed opening or early closure).
Failure to open and failure to report a closure, are a breach of the Pharmaceutical Services Regulations, which may result in NHS England and NHS Improvement taking contractual action in line with the attached Performance Management process.

We ask that pharmacies have procedures in place that ensure that NHS England DOES receive the required notifications and that these procedures take into account instances where the regular pharmacist/manager is absent. Larger multiples might want to link this notification into procedures they use to book urgent locum cover etc.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch via the team email address – syicb.syprimarycare@nhs.net.