A Sheffield pharmacy has chosen the “most sensible” option to downsize its premises amid frustrations with how the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) and NHS England (NHSE) have “underfunded community pharmacy”, it said.
Wicker Pharmacy chair Martin Bennett yesterday (March 10) told C+D that it “can’t depend on the DH providing sufficient finance” to run a pharmacy amid delays to the long-awaited 2024/25 community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF).
It comes after he this week (March 9) announced on X that a “lack of funding has meant that we have had to vacate the leased part of our premises (55-59 Wicker) and we are now in 61-67 Wicker which we own”.
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Bennett said the 21-year lease for 55-59 Wicker runs out on March 31 but the pharmacy decided that “it would be suicidal” to take another long lease “without knowing what we’re going to be paid”.
“We kept thinking ‘when we get the [funding] settlement we’ll know exactly whether we’re able to operate in a large premises’, but of course we still haven’t got the settlement from last year,” he told C+D.
“We have consolidated by moving out of the rented building to save money and to try and get back into a sustainable situation as far as funding is concerned,” he added.
“Survival of the cheapest”
Despite losing a dispensing robot, the redesign of 61-67 Wicker means the pharmacy still has space for three consultations rooms, a separate area for treating drug addiction and one of its dispensing robots.
Bennett said he is confident Wicker can “provide just as good a service from there as we did before, but it shouldn’t have come to that”.
And he added that the pharmacy “may have to offer fewer services” thanks to financial pressures and if industrial action goes ahead.
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Wicker originally secured the lease for the premises in 2004 and designed it around impressions Bennett had “from the DH on the way it wanted community pharmacy to go”, he said.
But over the lifespan of the lease, factors such as changes to methadone dispensing payments and inflation and minimum wage increases alongside a “succession of cuts” in the funding contracts have meant it was no longer viable, he added.
The pharmacy has also had to sell off other parts of its business including one selling mobility products, he told C+D.
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Bennett said that the current approach to pharmacy is the “survival of the cheapest” as it lends itself to those who can cut back the most.
“It’s quite depressing,” he told C+D. “We’ve had the last 14 years of going backwards, I can’t see [the Labour government] being able to rectify it in one go.
“It’s so frustrating. We’re doing more and more services, but it’s got to match a payment that covers it all.”
“We have to crawl out of this hole”
He said the downsizing will save between £50,000 and £60,000 a year but stressed that this will just “help towards making sure we’re not making a loss”.
“We’re going to have to gradually crawl back out of this hole we’re in and the quicker we get out, the better the service for patients,” he added.
Bennett thanked his “marvellous” staff and Peak Evolution for an “exceptionally good” refit while the pharmacy stayed open until 10pm every night.
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It comes after Wicker Pharmacy celebrated 73 years of late opening every day in January.
Last year, it took part in both of the National Pharmacy Association’s (NPA) #SaveOurPharmacies days of action – with managing director Ellie Bennett saying that the funding situation “is absolutely horrendous” in September.
Last month, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) set out a “timeframe” of April to July 2025 to “conclude and implement 2024/25 and 2025/26 negotiations” for the pharmacy contract after the long-awaited negotiations resumed in January.
