Pharmacy tax bomb could devastate Britain’s high streets

              

 

This is an abbreviated article by Liz Barclay – read the full article at Business111.com/news

Hundreds of community pharmacies could disappear as soaring business rates collide with already stretched NHS funding. A National Pharmacy Association survey of 420 pharmacies found 48% were considering closing and 55% looking at relocating to escape unaffordable rates. This isn’t simply another retail closure story. Pharmacies bring people onto high streets, provide essential NHS services and take pressure off GPs and hospitals. Lose them and the damage spreads far beyond the dispensary.

The bills don’t add up

Some pharmacies say their business rates bills have tripled.

The problem is that pharmacies can’t simply put up their prices to compensate. Around 90% of their income comes from the NHS, according to the NPA, leaving owners with little ability to pass higher costs onto customers.

GPs and NHS dentists have their business rates reimbursed. Pharmacies don’t.

Meanwhile, 44 pharmacies have already closed this year and nine in ten council areas have lost at least one since 2022.

A health service hiding on the high street

These businesses aren’t simply dispensing prescriptions.

Pharmacies increasingly provide vaccinations, blood-pressure checks, contraception, medicine reviews and treatment for minor illnesses.

Close the pharmacy and much of that demand doesn’t disappear. It lands back on GP surgeries and hospitals.

Rural, coastal and deprived communities could be particularly badly affected, especially older people, those with long-term illnesses and patients without easy access to transport.One closure can hurt an entire parade

There’s another consequence that receives much less attention.

A pharmacy can be an anchor business, generating reliable daily footfall for neighbouring cafés, shops and other microbusinesses.

Take it away and fewer people have a reason to visit.

Footfall drops, another business struggles, another unit becomes empty and the decline of the local shopping parade accelerates.

Pharmacies aren’t ordinary shops

The Government wants pharmacies to do more to relieve pressure on the NHS while the economics of operating them become increasingly difficult.

That contradiction needs addressing.

The NPA is calling for business rates relief comparable with that available elsewhere in primary healthcare, alongside sustainable NHS funding and greater protection for pharmacies serving vulnerable communities.

Pharmacies sit at the intersection of two problems Britain desperately needs to solve: an overstretched NHS and struggling high streets.

Allowing them to disappear risks making both worse.

This isn’t simply a pharmacy crisis. It’s a health crisis and a high street crisis arriving at the same time.

 

This is an abbreviated article by Liz Barclay – read the full article at Business111.com/news

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