Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many foundation pharmacist training places have a named designated prescribing practitioner confirmed in the ORIEL recruitment system in 2025.

All training posts in the National Recruitment Scheme for the 2025/26 training year were required to declare that they would provide access to a Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP) for prescribing supervision as part of their agreement to the Terms of Participation.

NHS England requires that DPP information is submitted within 13 weeks of the trainee pharmacist starting in post. Trainee pharmacists will start in post from July 2025. NHS England is therefore, currently in the process of contacting training sites and requesting details of all supervisors, including Designated Supervisors and DPPs.

It should be noted that only the training sites hosting trainee pharmacists that have graduated from a Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) degree against the 2021 learning outcomes are required to have a DPP. Those who have completed an MPharm which meets the previous (2011) standards for education and training or are studying on an Overseas Pharmacists Assessment Programme course, must take a separate accredited independent prescribing course.