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A GPhC inspection assesses the pharmacy against the GPhC standards for registered pharmacies across seven principles covering governance, staffing, premises, equipment, medicines management, and services — with particular scrutiny on controlled drugs records, standard operating procedures, and responsible pharmacist logs.

A community pharmacy must maintain a bound, paginated controlled drugs register for each Schedule 2 drug, with each entry made in ink or indelible form at the time of the transaction, and the register must be retained for at least two years from the date of the last entry.

When a pharmacy is open for business without the superintendent pharmacist on the premises, a responsible pharmacist must be designated, and the pharmacy must maintain a record of that designation including name, registration number, and the times the pharmacist was on duty — held for at least two years.

There is no fixed statutory list, but GPhC guidance and the Medicines Act framework require written SOPs covering at minimum: dispensing, clinical checks, the CD register, near miss and dispensing error reporting, patient confidentiality, infection control, and emergency supply — and the pharmacy must be able to show that all staff have read, understood, and followed them.

Patient-returned Schedule 2 CDs must be denatured using an authorised kit so they are irretrievable before disposal, in the presence of an authorised witness, and the destruction must be recorded in the CD register — they must not be disposed of in sharps bins or domestic waste.

A GPhC inspection is largely an evidence review: the pharmacy needs current, signed SOPs; a complete and balanced CD register; a continuous responsible pharmacist record; evidence of near miss recording and learning; and staff who can explain what they do — not just point to a policy binder.