PSNC has published new guidance to help community pharmacy contractors to complete the 2021/22 Data Security and Protection Toolkit. The Toolkit is used to make a pharmacy’s information governance (IG) declaration and must be completed by 30th June 2022. However, we recommended contractors complete the Toolkit as soon as possible.

PSNC has collaborated with NHS Digital to keep the workload associated with Toolkit completion manageable whilst maintaining the appropriate data security protections. Key differences in this year’s Toolkit include:

• The ‘tool tips’ contain pharmacy specific information for the first time;
• layout improvements;
• new mandatory questions;
• improvements to the question wording; and
• the Toolkit now displays the answers submitted by the pharmacy in the previous submission for many questions, allowing contractors to simply confirm the information remains accurate and adjust this if necessary.

The NHS Parent Organisation Code (POC) headquarters (HQ) batch submission feature has also been improved to enable contractors that own three or more pharmacies to complete a single submission for all their premises.

As with last year, most contractors should have access to information to help them answer the more technical questions contained within the Toolkit. Contractors who have refreshed and updated their templates in PSNC’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Workbook, should once again confirm this on the Toolkit’s Organisation Profile webpage as doing so will mean that around half of the Toolkit questions will be auto-completed.

PSNC has published our guidance materials as soon as was practicable and we strongly encourage contractors to consider this annual requirement in their workload planning for May and early June.

We also recommend that contractors with three or more pharmacies check that the list of pharmacies associated with their NHS POC code remains correct so that any issues can be rectified as soon as possible. See PSNC’s batch submission guidance (below) for more information.

PSNC guidance

• Toolkit completion: Overview: Five steps for completing the Data Security and Protection Toolkit 2021/22– this is a step-by-step guide to completing the Toolkit and contains references to other useful materials.
• Toolkit completion: Question-by-question guidance (mandatory questions)– this guidance has been designed to help contractors complete the mandatory questions within the Toolkit.
• Toolkit completion: Using the NHS Parent Org Code (HQ) batch submission (for pharmacy contractors with three or more pharmacies)

Next steps

Sign-up to the PSNC / NHS Digital webinar Tuesday 24th May at 7.00pm

PSNC recommends that contractors log in to the Toolkit as soon as possible, and read our guidance documents – starting with the Toolkit completion: Overview: Five steps guide. If time allows, contractors should begin filling in the Toolkit.

Please note that all the questions marked mandatory in the Toolkit must be completed as part of a pharmacy’s NHS Terms of Service to meet the minimum IG requirements.

Please also note that PMR suppliers may soon provide additional guidance to help contractors with completing the updated technical questions in the 2021/22 Toolkit.