Applications to provide NHS Pharmaceutical Services. A Consultation on the Control of Entry Arrangements and Dispensing GP Practices

Annex A

A consultation on the Control of Entry Arrangements and Dispensing GP Practices

The Scottish Government is inviting responses to its consultation on Control of Entry Arrangements and Dispensing GP Practices. The consultation will start on 12 December 2013 and will run until 20 February 2014.

Responding to the consultation

See Annexes B and C for questionnaire/ respondent form. We are inviting written responses to this consultation by 20 February 2014. Please send your response with the completed Respondent Information Form to: ControlofEntry2013@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or

If you have any queries please email as above or call 0131 244 2524.

We would be grateful if you would use the consultation questionnaire provided or could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to as this will aid our analysis of the responses received.

The Scottish Government's Consultation Process

Further information is provided at Annex C

A list of bodies to which this consultation has been sent is provided at Annex E

This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations.

The Scottish Government has an email alert system for consultations (SEconsult: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form (see Annex C), included with this consultation paper, as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library by 12 March 2014 and on the Scottish Government consultation web pages by 20 March 2014. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach decisions on what changes are required. We aim to issue a report on this consultation as early as possible in Spring 2014 and to make changes to Regulations as soon as is practicable.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them in the first instance to the address details overleaf for the attention of Brian O'Donnell.

Respondent Information Form

Please complete the Respondent Information Form, which is provided alongside the questionnaire. It must be returned with all responses.