The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) will deliver its petition to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting on September 19.

Those who have signed the petition have joined the NPA’s demands for “immediate, fair and sustained funding, to safeguard NHS pharmacy services and ensure local pharmacies have a future”.

“More than 300,000 people have signed the cross-sector petition of support, and the NPA is launching a final push to maximise the number of signatories to increase pressure on Government to act,” it added. 

The delivery will be on the “second national pharmacy day of action”, which the NPS said it plans to invite other “pharmacy bodies in England to join….to demonstrate our unity in calling for a new deal,” the NPA said. 

“Thousands of NPA campaign packs will arrive in pharmacies across the UK next week in support of the 19 September day of action,” the NPA added.

Read more: ‘Save Our Pharmacies’ protest: as it happened

Medicine bag stickers, posters and postcards with hashtag #saveourpharmacies will “urge pharmacies and their patients to sound the alarm at a decade of cuts and closures,” it added.

The plans come after the “highly successful” emergency #SaveOurPharmacies protest that took place on June 20, which saw around 6,000 pharmacies turn out their lights, black out their windows and wear black to raise awareness about the crisis in the sector.

First announced in early June, the initial “emergency” day of protest action on June 20 organised by the NPA sought to “signify dark times for the beleaguered community pharmacy sector”.

In April, the pharmacy union published an open letter to the NPA saying that employee and locum pharmacists “should not come under pressure to participate” in its June 20 protest and raising concerns around patient safety.

But it later said that it would launch its own separate but “supportive” campaign at a later date, after “discussions” with the NPA.