Hour long queues to collect prescriptions after pharmacy closures in Biggleswade says councillor

People are facing lengthy queues of more than an hour to collect prescriptions in Biggleswade after the closure of two pharmacies in the town, a meeting heard.

LloydsPharmacy announced in January that all 237 branches inside Sainsbury’s stores are to close over the next year in response to “changing market conditions”.

The company bought Sainsbury’s 280-branch pharmacy network in 2015 in a £125m deal.

One of these was located in Biggleswade at Sainsbury’s Bells Brook store, while the firm’s other premises was in Market Square in the town centre.

A meeting of Central Bedfordshire Council’s health and wellbeing board heard about the impact of the closures locally from Independent Biggleswade West councillor Hayley Whitaker, during the public session.

“I’m aware of pharmacy issues in Biggleswade, primarily it would seem involving correspondence with the BLMK integrated care board (ICB) and with Central Bedfordshire Council about this,” she told the board.

“It would be useful for local residents to know what’s happening about this and I’d welcome a response,” she explained.

“For anyone unaware, we’ve had two LloydsPharmacy outlets close fairly recently. It puts a huge strain on the remaining pharmacies, leading to queues of more than an hour for people to collect prescriptions.

“It’s just a generally unsatisfactory situation where even our voluntary groups are struggling to collect prescriptions for our vulnerable residents.

“Obviously it’s a situation which can’t continue like this in perpetuity, so I’d like to know where we’ve reached in getting replacement pharmacists.

“And I understand it should have come to the health and wellbeing board to be discussed. But it hasn’t, and I want to understand why the closure of the pharmacies wasn’t talked about here.”

BLMK integrated care board (ICB) chief transformation officer Anne Brierley replied: “The delegation of community pharmacy services came to all ICBs in April.

“It’s still managed at a national and regional level in the NHS by a pharmaceutical regulatory committee. Pharmacies are independent businesses and contractors.

“There’s a national contract they can choose to sign into and it’s beyond our control sadly if any of our contractors step away.

“What I checked over the regulations is that if we now locally are choosing to move or change a pharmacy then we need to engage with you, and do that formally through the health and wellbeing board process.

“If the issue is something which happens beyond our control, we should notify the board. But the primary focus is engaging directly with the local councillors and local population.

“I understand you’ve had an issue with the email link and how any information is sent. So I’ve asked our communications team to go back to April 1st when these responsibilities were delegated to us,” she added.

“We need to make sure we haven’t missed anything else, while checking the link to the health and wellbeing board inbox is working.

“As for attracting another company to choose to provide a community pharmacy, I’ll talk to our chief primary care officer Nicky Poulain to share the most up-to-date information in writing.”