Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of (a) the optimum number of pharmacies and (b) areas where there is an oversupply of pharmacies.

Community pharmacies are private businesses that provide National Health Service funded services.

There were 10,402 community pharmacies on 30 September 2025. In general, despite a reduction in the number of pharmacies in recent years, patient access to pharmacies remains good, and continues to be better in the most deprived areas when compared with the least deprived.

The vast majority of pharmacies are not directly commissioned or contracted by the NHS, instead contractors apply to gain entry to the NHS pharmaceutical list and if an application is approved, a pharmacy can start providing NHS services.

The assessments of the adequacy of provision, the location, and the number of pharmacies required in a certain area are the statutory responsibility of local authorities health and wellbeing boards. Local authorities are required to publish a pharmaceutical needs assessment (PNA) every three years. Integrated care boards (ICBs) give regard to the PNAs when reviewing applications from potential contractors.

Contractors can apply to open a new pharmacy to meet any current or future need identified in the PNA, but also to offer benefits to patients that were not foreseen by the PNA. If there is a need for a new local pharmacy to open and no contractors apply to open a pharmacy and fill the gap, ICBs can directly commission a new pharmacy to open outside of the market entry processes and can fund the contract from the ICB’s budgets.

Contractors can already seek an ICB’s permission to either consolidate different premises onto one site or to relocate their pharmacy premises to a different address. The approval of such requests depends on the impact it is likely to cause for patients and commissioners.