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The director of a regional pharmacy group based in North-West London has said the community pharmacy funding deal announced last month is “a kick in the teeth” for the sector and revealed rising costs are impacting the business and potentially putting patients at risk.

Mahesh Shah (pictured), a director at RightPharm Limited which operates six pharmacies, told Independent Community Pharmacist the £3.073 billion funding package agreed between Community Pharmacy England (CPE) and the Government for 2025-26 was “very disappointing” in light of an independent economic analysis which revealed the full cost of providing NHS pharmaceutical services in England in 2023-24 was £4.397 billion to £5.730 billion.

Headlines completely ignore chronic underfunding 

Shah was critical of CPE for its description of the settlement as “the largest uplift in funding across the whole of the NHS”. He also challenged the negotiator’s suggestion it “will provide a greater than 30 per cent uplift to funding for community pharmacy over the coming financial year compared to 2023-24".

“The headlines completely ignore the chronic underfunding of the sector over the last 10 years which has led to a record number of pharmacy closures,” he said.

He insisted increases in employment costs, which kicked in at the start of this month, have heaped further pressure on his pharmacies.

RightPharm had to make three members of staff redundant, although Shah said two of those have since been replaced, and reduce the working hours of some staff, totalling 130 hours a week across its six pharmacies.

The company also reduced the opening hours of one pharmacy by nine hours, another by seven and-a-half hours and another store by four hours.

Decision to charge for medicines delivery not taken lightly

One of its branches, Calverton Pharmacy in Luton, has started charging £5 to deliver medicines to housebound patients, a decision RightPharm’s commercial director Rushab Shah insisted was a “direct result of chronic underfunding and rising costs”.

“This was not a decision we took lightly,” he told ICP. “We instituted this charge in April after exhausting other ways to absorb escalating costs. Like many pharmacies, Calverton Pharmacy had provided free medicine deliveries for years as a goodwill service, especially to elderly and housebound patients.

“Unfortunately, the delivery service is not funded by the NHS at all. We receive no reimbursement for delivering medicines to patients’ homes.”

He added: “Our hand was forced by the combination of rising staff wages, higher fuel and energy costs, increasing medicines prices, and tax burdens such as national insurance.

“We want the public to know that this nominal £5 charge or £35 for six months’ deliveries, £60 for a year, is in place solely to offset a portion of those delivery costs and keep the service running.”

Rushab Shah said the £5 charge will remain in place “for as long as it remains necessary to support the viability of our delivery service”.

“We continuously monitor our financial situation and will review the fee on an ongoing basis,” he said, insisting the company has had to be “very cautious about recruitment and overtime”.

Mahesh Shah said RightPharm is also reviewing its provision of monitored dosage systems for patients because they are “time-consuming” and carry “risks which can outweigh the benefits to patients”.

Insisting Calverton Pharmacy has no plans “to implement any additional charges for NHS services”, he said: “We are trying to innovate and expand services where possible. For example, (we are) leveraging digital tools for prescription ordering and collaborating with local GPs to support patients with long-term conditions.

“Calverton Pharmacy is not alone in this struggle. Many pharmacies nationwide have had to make similar hard choices.”