More pharmacies in Newcastle will shut down without urgent Government intervention to deal with an “entirely avoidable storm”, one owner predicts. Tony Schofield has warned that Tyneside pharmacies are “struggling to cope” with having to take on hundreds of extra patients following closures by large chains like Boots, adding to major financial pressure posed by rent and energy bill hikes. He has spoken out after complaints from Newcastle City Council leader Nick Kemp that the closure of Boots chemist branches in areas like Heaton and Kenton had resulted in huge queues and “incredible delays” at some of the city’s remaining pharmacies.
Mr Schofield, who owns the Molineux Pharmacy in Byker, has now issued a plea for ministers to provide more funding to help keep pharmacies afloat or risk seeing more more cut their hours or close down entirely. He said: “Community pharmacists have for eight years been warning of this entirely avoidable storm. The Government continues to parrot the £2.
6 billion they pay to the profession but what they don’t ever say is that in 2016 the figure was cut from £2.8 billion and it hasn’t increased by a penny since. “That is despite inflation, increasing wage and energy costs, pharmacists leaving the sector to work elsewhere other than in their communities, exorbitant rent rises – particularly in NHS controlled premises – and a system in which price rises and increasing shortages of vital drugs have meant pharmacies are being.
