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.
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.