Pharmacies have been used to rank the health of the UK’s high streets.

A league table, compiled by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), ranked 70 of the nation’s major towns and cities based on the proportion of local businesses that either supported or harmed residents' health.

More than 2,000 members of the public and experts scored businesses on the extent to which they encouraged healthy choices, with pharmacies joining leisure centres and health services as businesses that had the most positive impact on the public health of a high street.

The RSPH identified bookmakers, payday loan shops, fast food outlets and tanning salons as having a negative impact.

Using this rating system, the RSPH scored Shrewsbury as the healthiest retail area, followed by Ayr in Scotland and Salisbury. Preston, Middlesbrough and Coventry were the unhealthiest areas, it said.

The RSPH used the results to call for the next government to introduce a raft of measures to ensure high streets promoted healthier living. These included handing local authorities greater planning powers to reduce the spread of businesses associated with unhealthy living, and creating a public health criteria for business licensing.

Although the ranking system was “by no means a reflection of whether these areas are generally healthy or unhealthy”, the RSPH’s research had found that higher concentrations of unhealthy businesses existed in areas with high levels of deprivation and premature mortality, said chief executive Shirley Cramer.

Granting local authorities “enhanced powers to create a rich mix of health-promoting businesses” was one way to respond to NHS England’s call for the public health agenda to be taken “further and faster”.

Pharmacy Voice said it supported the RSPH’s call to make “public health a consideration when planning community infrastructure”.

It renewed its call for stop smoking and health check services to be nationally commissioned in pharmacies to “ensure that national and regional health inequalities are reduced as far as possible”.

How else could pharmacies help create healthier high streets?

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