MARK MARLOW/EPA-EFE/REX/ShutterstockPharmacy owners in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted in favour of cutting opening hours and stopping home deliveries for the first time, in a protest over government funding.The National Pharmacy Association (NPA), which ran the ballot, is calling for an annual £1.7bn funding increase to plug the “financial hole”.The NPA represents 6,500 of the UK’s community pharmacies – that’s around half of them. It says 99% of those that responded to the vote said they were willing to limit their services unless funding was improved.The Department of Health in England says it wants all pharmacists to work with it to achieve a service fit for the future.Some 3,339 independent community pharmacies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in the unprecedented ballot, which is a turnout of 64%.The vote comes after the Budget saw increases in National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage.The government has not committed to supporting pharmacies to cover these costs, the NPA says, unlike other parts of the NHS.The pharmacies’ body, which isn’t a trade union, says 700 pharmacies have shut in England in the last two years alone – the equivalent of seven a week – because of workloads and budget cuts.It adds that core government pharmacy funding in England has fallen by 40% since 2015-16, after adjusting for inflation. The NPA says it will be left with no choice but to recommend pharmacies withdraw services from as early as the new year, if funding isn’t increased.What could change?Pharmacies could decide:not to open beyond 40 hours a week, into evenings and at weekendsto stop providing free home deliveries of medicines which are not fundednot to offer emergency contraception, substance misuse and smoking support servicesto refuse to co-operate with certain data requeststo stop supplying free monitored dose systems (medicine packs), other than those covered by the Disability Discrimination Act’Something has got to give’NPA chairman Nick Kaye said the ballot result “overwhelmingly shows the sheer anger and frustration of pharmacy owners at a decade of cuts that is forcing dedicated health professionals to shut their doors for good”.He said he cared deeply about his patients – like other pharmacy teams – but he has never experienced a situation as desperate as this.”Pharmacy owners are not a radical bunch. We have never proposed action like this before, but afte …
