By Paul Bennett, RPS Chief Executive

This blog follows the recent Assembly meeting which saw RPS’ governing body review our progress towards implementing constitutional changes and transitioning to become a registered charity and royal college, the Royal College of Pharmacy. We are committed to keeping members and the wider pharmacy community in touch with what’s happening to make us ‘royal college-ready’, so this is the first of a series of blogs to update on Assembly’s decisions as they are made, and to address any questions that emerge.

Having secured the mandate for change through the special resolution vote in March 2025, there’s a lot of work now going on to make the change members voted on happen. However, I recognise that that’s not necessarily how things seem. After the noise and energy of the vote campaign, it may feel as though things have gone a bit quiet. I’d like to address that now and reassure our members, and everyone with a keen interest in progress, by outlining how much is going on behind the scenes.

The reality of the royal college transition is that, while the vote gives a green light for significant change, these changes now need to be enacted in the most effective and future-focused way. What this means in practice is the painstaking work of addressing many smaller specific changes. I’m very grateful to our Assembly members for the diligence, consideration and commitment they are applying to what are a complex series of decisions that need to be made to ensure effective foundations that will enable the royal college to flourish in the future.

This work is necessarily detailed and difficult, and requires us to engage with specialists in the legal, financial and regulatory environment we are entering as a royal college and registered charity. The nature of the changes underway means we’re also working with the Privy Council Office, Charity Commission and Scottish Charity Regulator.

To give you a flavour, an example of the detailed issues under discussion at the moment is the design of effective governance processes.

Much of our historic governance could be kindly described as having organically evolved. It has developed over time and is the result of several tweaks to try and solve problems rather than being able to implement fulsome change, as that has always been identified by various governance working groups as ultimately requiring change to our Royal Charter. Since 2010 and the regulator’s (GPHC) separation from the professional leadership body (RPS), we’ve tried three times to renew and improve our governance. These changes haven’t been particularly radical – things like trying to align election dates and terms of office so that they integrate better and optimise the process of selecting our president. Each time we tried, however, we found we couldn’t enact changes without charter reform.

We now have a mandate for a once in a generation opportunity to do something really meaningful. Thanks to the votes of our members and the unity and support of our national boards and Assembly members, we can tackle these challenges and put right these discrepancies. While these sound like small details, they are fundamental to the future success of the organisation, for the profession and for the patients we serve. Getting them right means we will have greater organisational agility and effectiveness and can enact our stated Commitments and speak with a stronger voice for pharmacy.

In parallel to the internal work of shaping the new constitution, we are also engaging externally, in particular with and alongside the UK Pharmacy Professional Leadership Advisory Board (UKPPLAB), with whom we have formed a new liaison-group to jointly discuss the future royal college and its purpose, and how we might collaborate more effectively in the future. This complements the ‘bilateral’ relationships we are maintaining with the specialist pharmacy groups and professional leadership bodies that make up the UKPPLAB membership. All of these organisations are vital to the future success of pharmacy professional leadership, and this will be another strand in my reporting to members about our progress.

So much of what we are doing at the moment is about getting ‘royal college-ready’ and using this opportunity to inclusively shape the future of the organisation. Assembly’s role, on behalf of members and with the future of the organisation and our mission in mind, is to make the decisions that will underpin our governance and constitution changes – decisions that will have long-term, positive impacts for the profession, patients and the health system. Proposed changes to regulations, as always, will be subject to a gazetting process so that we can hear members’ views on those proposed changes ahead of any final decisions being taken by Assembly.

Building the new strategy for the new royal college:

We’re looking ahead to the development of the new five-year strategy for the new royal college, based around our Commitments and which members will play a central role in building. As well as sessions in our upcoming Scottish and Welsh conferences in August and September, we will be announcing a series of online events planned for September and October and an all-member survey. Your contribution and ideas will help shape the strategy of the new royal college so I do hope you will take part.

As part of our strategy engagement, you can also share your views on the Commitments and your hopes and aspirations for the new royal college via our [email protected] email account.

Read more RPS blogs.