Pharmacy: Closures

(asked on 15th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate her Department has made of the number of closures of community pharmacies in the current Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework period.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 29th January 2024

The NHS Business Services Authority publishes official statistics which includes the number of pharmacies opening and closing in each financial year. The following table shows how many pharmacies opened or closed within the last five years:

Financial Year

Pharmacies opened

Pharmacies closed

2018/2019

220

347

2019/2020

239

405

2020/2021

236

451

2021/2022

308

418

2022/2023

297

388

Community pharmacies are private businesses that receive funding to provide pharmaceutical services for the National Health Service. The decision to close, divest or consolidate is a commercial decision made by the business owner. The Department is monitoring changes to the market closely. Access remains good, with 80% of people in England living within a 20 minutes’ walk from a local pharmacy, and with twice as many pharmacies in deprived areas.

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