Standard operating procedures don’t come up much in sale negotiations. Buyers are focused on turnover, prescription items, the lease and the NHS paperwork. But on the day you take over, the SOPs on the shelf become yours. If they’re out of date, unsigned or written for a different way of working, that’s your problem from completion onwards.
This guide covers which SOPs a pharmacy has to have, what to check when you inherit them and what to change once the business is in your name.
Why SOPs matter more after a sale
The legal duty to have pharmacy procedures sits with whoever runs the pharmacy business. Before completion that’s the seller. After completion it’s you.
Inherited SOPs often have the seller’s name, the old superintendent’s sign off and staff signatures that are years old. Some will describe systems the pharmacy no longer uses. Others will be missing altogether. None of that tends to show up until a GPhC inspector asks to see them, or something goes wrong and the procedure turns out not to match what staff actually do.
The GPhC also asks new owners to show how they’ll meet the standards for registered pharmacies from the day they take over. Working procedures are a big part of that. Our post on GPhC premises registration after a change of ownership covers that notification in more detail, and our guide to change of ownership and FTP applications covers the NHS side.
The SOPs the law requires
The Medicines (Pharmacies) (Responsible Pharmacist) Regulations 2008 set out the procedures every registered pharmacy needs. They have to cover the following.
- the safe and effective ordering, storage, preparation, sale, supply, delivery and disposal of medicines
- when staff who aren’t pharmacists can give advice about medicines
- how you identify which staff are competent to do which tasks
- the records kept for handling medicines
- what happens when the responsible pharmacist is absent
- the steps to take when the responsible pharmacist changes
- how complaints are dealt with
- what to do about incidents that suggest the pharmacy isn’t running safely
- how staff are told about changes to procedures
The procedures can be on paper, electronic or a mix. They must be kept at the premises and be available to the owner, the superintendent, the responsible pharmacist and the pharmacy team. The regulations also say they must be reviewed regularly. There’s no fixed interval in law, but many owners review every two years, or sooner when something changes.
A change of ownership is one of those times.
SOPs the NHS and other bodies expect
The legal minimum is only part of it. If the pharmacy holds an NHS contract, the clinical governance requirements and the service specifications bring in more.
Each advanced service the pharmacy provides normally needs its own procedure. Pharmacy First, the New Medicine Service, the hypertension case finding service and the contraception service all expect the pharmacy to have an SOP and for staff involved to have read it. If the pharmacy offers locally commissioned services, check those specifications too.
Controlled drugs need their own set. That covers ordering, receipt, storage, the CD register, destruction, returns and dealing with discrepancies. NHS England’s controlled drugs teams expect these to be current, and they’re one of the first things looked at after an incident.
Other procedures you’d expect to find include dispensing and accuracy checking, near misses and dispensing errors, safeguarding, information governance, fridge and cold chain monitoring, waste disposal, deliveries and repeat prescription management.
Recent changes to supervision
Supervision rules started changing in 2026, and that affects SOPs. Since 7 January 2026, pharmacists have been able to authorise a pharmacy technician to hand out checked and bagged prescriptions while the pharmacist is absent. More changes are due from 10 December 2026, covering what pharmacy technicians can do around preparing, assembling and supplying medicines.
The Pharmacists’ Defence Association has said owners shouldn’t use these new freedoms without robust procedures in place. If you’re buying a pharmacy and plan to work this way, write the procedure first. And check whether the seller has started using the new rules, because if they have, the SOPs should say so.
What to check before you buy
SOPs don’t usually change the price of a pharmacy, but they tell you a lot about how it’s run. During due diligence, it’s worth asking for the following.
- the full SOP index, with the date each was last reviewed
- who signed them off and when
- the staff signature sheets
- any SOPs for services the pharmacy claims for
Gaps between what the pharmacy claims for and what it has procedures for are worth flagging. So are SOPs that haven’t been reviewed in three or four years. Neither will stop a sale, but they tell you how much work is waiting after completion.
It’s also worth reading the pharmacy’s latest GPhC inspection report alongside the SOPs. Inspectors often comment on whether procedures are up to date and followed. Our buyer’s guide to purchasing a pharmacy covers the wider due diligence checklist.
What to do in the first few weeks
You don’t need to rewrite everything on day one. But a few things should happen quickly.
Make sure the procedures name the new owner and the right superintendent pharmacist. If your company is buying through a new entity, the superintendent nominated to the GPhC needs to sign them off.
Have staff read and sign them again under the new ownership. This is the simplest way to show the team has seen the current versions, and it gives you a chance to spot where practice and paper don’t match.
Check the responsible pharmacist procedures in particular. The arrangements for absences and for handing over between pharmacists are a legal requirement, and new owners often bring in different locums or rotas. Our post on responsible pharmacist rules goes into this, and if you’re weighing up staffing, see managing locums vs full time staff.
Update anything tied to systems that change on completion. If the PMR (patient medication record) supplier, wholesaler, NHSmail address or ODS code is changing, the procedures that mention them need updating too.
If you own more than one pharmacy
Group owners usually want one set of SOPs across all their branches. That makes sense, but don’t overwrite a new branch’s procedures without looking at how it actually works. A pharmacy with a large care home workload or a busy substance misuse service may need local procedures that a template doesn’t cover.
Bring the new branch onto your group SOPs in a planned way, with training, rather than swapping the folder over one weekend.
Buying a pharmacy with Healthcare Plus
SOPs are one of many things that need sorting when a pharmacy changes hands. Healthcare Plus helps buyers through the whole process, from finding the right business to change of ownership and FTP applications with NHS England and the GPhC.
Browse our pharmacies for sale or contact us to talk through a purchase.
