Pharmacists and pharmacy bodies had contacted the national newspaper to raise concerns that Pharmacy2U’s advertising campaign – which saw banner ads for the online pharmacy appear under individual pharmacy listings – was potentially misleading patients into signing up to Pharmacy2U’s online services, rather than their local pharmacy.

A spokesperson for the Evening Standard told C+D this afternoon (March 17) that while its business directory is “powered by a third party” – a business directory network called Scoot – and as such it does “not have operative control over those pages”, it has asked Scoot to remove the adverts.

“[We] have been told that these adverts will be removed from our pharmacy listing pages,” the spokesperson added.

C+D has also contacted Scoot directly.