The following is an announcement on behalf of DHSC:
From Wednesday 5 August 2020, community pharmacies will be invited to register on the PPE portal.
Pharmacies will receive an email via their NHSmail account inviting them to register with the PPE portal between Wednesday 5 and Friday 7 August 2020. Invitations will be sent to the email address associated with their premises that is on NHS England’s record.
Community pharmacies will be able to order PPE free of charge for use when providing NHS Pharmaceutical Services in line with PHE guidelines. However, users who newly join the portal will temporarily have order limits set to a small proportion of their eventual PPE limit. For the time being, continue to use your existing supply routes as your main source of PPE, using the PPE portal being as an emergency top-up route.
Community pharmacies are strongly encouraged to register with the portal now, to ensure that if they need to order PPE from the portal over the coming months, they are ready. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) continues to analyse future PPE supply arrangements to ensure resilience in the face of the continuing COVID-19 pressures.
Further communications will be sent out in due course on when order limits will be increased for community pharmacies to enable them to access PPE through the portal as a primary route.
More information on what items are available for your sector and size is available on the DHSC guidance page.
If you have any queries, or are struggling to register, please contact the PPE Portal Customer Service team at 0800 876 6802 who will be able to help support you and resolve your queries. Any enquiries about not receiving an invitation to the portal should be made after Monday 10 August.
Thank you for your continued work to keep people safe.