Local authorities have been advised to work alongside pharmacies to ensure stronger vaccination coverage, particularly in rural areas.
On July 25, the Local Government Association (LCA) published guidance titled ‘Strengthening local immunisation services’.
The guide identified a “distinct set of barriers” patients in rural and coastal communities face when accessing vaccines, including “travel distance, limited transportation” and “declining pharmacy coverage”.
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Without an accessible pharmacy for rural populations, the LGA warned that vaccinations will become “significantly harder to access”, resulting in “immunisation inequality”.
Vaccinations delivered in primary care settings such as shingles, RSV and pneumococcal programmes are most likely to face “genuine gaps in coverage”.
Who is accountable?
The guidelines call for “active local oversight” by councils to ensure different routes of adult vaccinations are available to their populations.
Councils are also urged to ask about the “alternative delivery model” in place for residents who cannot easily reach their nearest pharmacy and to identify “who is accountable” for reaching these individuals.
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Further, the LGA called upon council’s operating in rural areas to ensure “equity analysis is sensitive to geography, not just deprivation and ethnicity” so that “local plans explicitly address the additional cost and complexity of reaching dispersed populations”.
Alastair Buxton, director of NHS services at Community Pharmacy England, proposed commissioning more pharmacies to deliver shingles, RSV and pneumococcal vaccinations to “address the identified gaps in provision”.
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“We believe further commissioning of pharmacies to provide NHS vaccination programmes can help address falling vaccine coverage,” he said. “Particularly in relation to less well served groups of the population and areas of the country.”
It comes after research by Gophr revealed 551 pharmacies closed their doors between 2022 and 2025.
And it follows community pharmacies in Northern Ireland hitting their lowest numbers recorded.
