The President welcomed members to the first meeting of Council under the new National Professional Committee structure. He also welcomed Amicus Regional Officer Sarah Carpenter to the meeting.
There was discussion on the vacancies on Council and it was agreed that members working in Primary Care would be asked in a newsletter for nominations to the Primary Care seat on Council. It was important that the nominee recognised they would be expected to put forward the Primary Care perspective on any discussions and not just the views of a particular Primary Care organisation to which they happened to belong.
Membership Database
Everyone is to be reminded that they need to contact Amicus with any changes to their address or employer to ensure their membership records is kept up to date.
Office Bearers election
Several appointments were made at the meeting
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Treasurer
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Simon
Mynes
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Communications Officer
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Vilma
Gilis
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Recruitment Officer
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Martin
Pratt
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Webmaster
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Jim
Bannerman
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Auditors
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Tracey
Boyce
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and
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Suzanne
Khalid
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Awards Co-ordinator
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Colin
Rodden
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Council Meeting
Pre-registration Places
Due to the funding arrangements in place in England, there could be a major reduction in the number of NHS pre-registration places in 2006/7. Funding for each placement is around £6-7,000 short of what they should be paid in London. Unless this is resolved, about 200 places could be lost in London and about 600 across England.
Section 60 Consultation
GHP is to produce a response to the document and discuss it with the Chief Pharmacists in the four Home Countries. I would be grateful for any comments for inclusion into the GHP response to the document. Please send them to me as soon as possible.
International Committee
For a number of reasons, there would not be a UK delegation to the General Assembly of EAHP in June. A letter explaining the situation was to be sent to the EAHP President offering to meet the EAHP Board at its next formally constituted meeting to raise concerns.
GHP Scottish Advisory Group
Agreement was obtained for the creation of a Scottish Advisory Group to support the work of the Secretary for Scotland. The need for this group was seen to be a direct result of representation from Scotland being reduced from two District Members by right and two National Members who happened to be based in Scotland on the previous Council to the one Regional Member in the new structure. The membership of the Group should not exceed six members and will comprise representatives from North, East and West Scotland, a Chief Pharmacist (or Senior Operational Manager) a Primary Care representative and/or a Mental Health representative. All members of the Group must be GHP/Amicus members and either accredited reps or deemed by Amicus Health Sector to have attained equivalent recognition. Details of the members of the Group will be circulated on the ghpscot mailing list once available.
Agenda for Change
GHP is still collating results from around the country. To ensure that a proper consistency check can be carried out, I need to have the details once they are available to forward to Council.
It was noted that many areas are putting pharmacists and pharmacy technicians on to protection. This does not comply with the agreement. Any pharmacists or pharmacy technician disadvantaged on assimilation should receive a recruitment and retention premium (RRP) instead of pay protection. This will need to be pointed out to HR and payroll if they are unaware.
The Pay Review Body were unhappy by the evidence put forward by staff side and the management side. In future years they wish to have a joint submission of evidence. It was also reported that they were unsure of what they were supposed to do with RRPs!
One item that GHP needs to collate for the PRB submission is data on where managed service pre-regs go on qualification.
Concern had been raised over the reorganisations in Scotland and where single system working leaves Chief Pharmacists who are not Directors of Pharmacy and also the Directors of Pharmacy themselves. It was pointed out that assimilation will be made on the level of the post at 1st October 2004. The Professional Manager Pharmaceutical Services profile level 5 freedom to act reflects corporate responsibility and the guidance states that "normally there would only be one post at this level per organisation". In a discussion with JEWP at one of the early implementer sites, it was confirmed that the word "normally" was inserted specifically to cover the situation where there were e.g. five medical consultants with the same level of responsibility. It would not be the case that only one could have level 5. The key would be the definition of the word "organisation".
Members with special interests
It was agreed that members should be requested to complete a form about any special interests they have, for collation into a professional database. The CPHVA have already compiled such a list of members. The intention is that GHP has the ability to ask members interested in a particular area of practice to comment on any documents affecting that area. This would be especially useful if no Council members had expertise in that area and would increase the ability of members to input into Guild consultation responses.
Colin Rodden
12.5.06