A Lancashire pharmacy has had to throw away around £20,000-worth of medicines following an attempted burglary on Sunday, it has revealed.
Lancashire Police confirmed to C+D that officers were called to Well Pharmacy in Longridge on Monday (November 17) following reports of an attempted burglary in the early hours of the previous morning.
Read more: Bonfire night break-in leaves £6k loss for pharmacy
Pharmacy manager Georgia Turner today (November 19) told C+D that CCTV shows two people outside the premises at the time of the incident and that one of them had “switched [the pharmacy’s] power off” via an electric box outside.
She said that because the power cut had turned the pharmacy’s fridges off, all the stock inside them “had to go” - resulting in around £20k of wastage.
Read more: ‘He threatened to kill me’: NPA chair confronts shoplifter
“Some of the vaccines alone added up to about £4k or £5k and then [there were] all the medicines on top of that - because we’ve got two fridges and they were both very well-stocked,” Turner said.
And she added that the incident has had a “massive knock-on effect”, resulting in the disposal of “checked medications that were…ready to go to patients”.
“Massive inconvenience”
Turner said that the pharmacy is “slowly getting back to normal” and that patients have “luckily” not been “massively affected”, with some having assured the team that they have “enough insulin” for the next few days.
“So far, no one’s been without anything, but it’s just a massive inconvenience to everybody,” she added.
Lancashire Police yesterday told C+D that an investigation into the incident “has been launched” and enquiries are ongoing.
Read more: Arrests made for machete attack as NPA warns of ‘surge’ in crime
It comes after a bonfire night raid on a community pharmacy in Edinburgh saw cash and goods worth an estimated £6,000 snatched from the till and medicine cabinets.
And in August, National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair Olivier Picard revealed that he had confronted a shoplifter in his pharmacy in Reading, who “threatened” to kill him before running away with the stolen items.
Read more: ‘Racially aggravated’: Teen burglars leave pharmacy ‘non-operational’
Meanwhile, NPA survey findings released the same month found that 87% of pharmacies have “seen an increase in aggressive and intimidating behaviour toward pharmacy teams in the last year”.
Of the “around 500 pharmacies” surveyed, 22% said they had “even seen physical assaults on staff” in the same period and 88% reported “a surge in incidents of shoplifting”.
