Save Our Pharmacies Campaign

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#SaveOurPharmacies – We need your help to save pharmacies in England

In context re our current funding crisis:

1. The 5-year funding deal was agreed before the COVID pandemic and before the current effects of inflation
and cost of living crisis could have been predicted: this was a very different financial world to the one we
now live in.

2. The £2.592bn deal was set when the Government imposed a funding cut on the sector in 2016. It amounts to
around a 30% funding cut in the past seven years. The impact of this is now pushing many pharmacy
businesses to the brink of collapse and without urgent intervention we expect that more permanent closures
of pharmacies, possibly in large numbers, are inevitable.

3. In addition to inflationary pressures there are many other pressures which could not have been anticipated
when the CPCF five-year deal was agreed, including:

➢ Workforce shortages and rising staff costs – locum costs have risen by 80% in the past year.
➢ Increased demand for advice (as patients are diverted from GPs), which is not being fully funded – we
estimate that pharmacies undertake 65million informal (and largely unpaid for) interactions a year.
➢ Instability in the medicines market – Pharmacists are finding it increasingly time consuming and expensive
to source the right medicines for their patients. In December 2022, there were 204 medicines price
concessions, a record number. This is an indicator of how hard pharmacy teams are having to work to source
medicines; price rises also put financial pressure on businesses.