Exclusive Asda and a pharmacy company that specialises in GP pharmacies made almost a third of the applications for 100-hour pharmacies during the nine-month consultation before the exemption was scrapped.

Practice Asda pharmacies are now selling just one script-free Ventolin Evohaler at a time and require patients' consent to contact their GPs, after pharmacists raised concerns that doctors were being left out of the loop.

Legal Law firm Charles Russell has said that deliberately ignoring 100-hour bids constituted a breach of the law, as businesses pursue substantial damages from PCTs that blocked applications until the cut-off date passed.

People The majority of respondents to a C+D poll believe non-pharmacists struggle to manage pharmacy teams, while some have hit out at their ability to manage targets, complaining they tend to be “aggressive and inappropriate”.

Business While nine in 10 pharmacists polled by C+D believed loss-leading services gave an unfair advantage to multiples, Asda superintendent pharmacist John Evans (pictured) argued service innovation was key to pharmacy's future.

The story 2012 proved to be the year of the patient group direction (PGD), kicking off in July with Asda's move to provide two salbutamol inhalers every eight weeks to customers without...

Careers Asda store manager Martyn Stainton tells C+D what it’s really like to be a non-pharmacist manager, and responds to the controversy over target pressures

Practice The vast majority of pharmacists feel under pressure to hit service targets, so what – or who – is to blame, and what can you do about it?

Business A top tactic to promote the profession or a bargain that devalues the sector? After the launch of a prescription-free inhaler scheme, C+D presents the arguments for and against clinical services offered at a low price

"A complete shambles" Numark's Mimi Lau wasn't impressed by the government's Quit Kits smoking cessation scheme The year kicked off with controversy when RCGP chair Clare Gerada...