St Aldhelm’s Pharmacy in Frome stopped using a robot in 2014, when it decided to return to “the human touch”.

The pharmacy started in a Portacabin in 2011, handling only 3,000 prescriptions a month. It moved to its current site – attached to a medical practice – the following year, from where it now dispenses 25,000 items and makes more than 1,000 free deliveries every month.

St Aldhelm’s manager and superintendent Nikki Winter said: “We spent so much time in the past managing the robot, that we lost some focus on our customers and, of course, they are the most important thing.”

“The move away from automation and a return to real people has made a big difference,” she said.

St Aldhelm’s currently employs 16 people – seven full-time and six part-time pharmacy staff, as well as three part-time drivers.

The government’s push for the expansion of automated hub-and-spoke dispensing among independents appeared to stall in May, and Ms Winter said the success of the pharmacy business shows there is a profitable alternative to this model.

“We’d prefer not to go down the route of using a hub-and-spoke system, but to look at purchasing in a more productive way," she said.

The change was part of a strategy by consultants from Lincoln-based Warwick Healthcare, which operates 13 pharmacies between Barnsley and Cambridge. 

Warwick Healthcare director Kav Hundle said: "As with any business, there is no single right solution, but in this case our advice was to make the move away from automation. That was, of course, only one step in a series of moves designed to help the business grow."