A Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) data analysis this week (October 21) revealed that the number of 100-hour pharmacies has “decreased by almost 90%”, dropping from 947 to just 96 between September 2022 and June 2024.
In this period, “nearly one in five” (17%) 100-hour pharmacies closed their doors and “a staggering two-thirds” (66%) reduced their hours after rules were changed last year, it found.
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NHS policy previously set out that pharmacies were allowed to open no matter the local need as long as their services were available for at least 100 hours per week.
But in May last year, the NHS terms of service were amended to allow these pharmacies to open for a minimum of 72 hours instead.
“Financial pressures”
According to the CCA, the reduction in the number of 100-hour pharmacies Is primarily due to “financial pressures from insufficient NHS funding”.
CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said that “without action, more pharmacies will either close or be forced to further reduce their opening hours”.
“Community pharmacies want to deliver more care for patients but are held back by a broken NHS funding contract” and “desperately need additional money just to survive”, he added.
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The CCA called for government investment in community pharmacies “through the expansion of the NHS Pharmacy First service and commissioning of new services”.
The underfunding of community pharmacies must “be resolved once and for all”, it added.
Meanwhile, the new data analysis also revealed that “almost 64,000 hours of community pharmacy weekly opening hours were lost between September 2022 and June 2024 – equivalent to 3.4 million hours per year”.
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“Nearly two-thirds (62%) was due to pharmacy closures, whilst 38% was due to reduced opening hours,” it added.
Chair of the Pharmacy Law & Ethics Association (PLEA) and solicitor David Reissner last year said that “allowing 100-hour pharmacies to reduce their opening hours is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”.
“Allowing pharmacies to close without any regard to where and when they do so not only hurts the owners and their employees [but also] undermines the entire community pharmacy network”, Reissner said at the time.