The closure Boots on Glastonbury High Street on 14th October is a continuing matter of grave concern to the residents of Glastonbury and its surrounding area, and also its many visitors. Following hot on the heels of the closure of the pharmacy at Tesco, it leaves the town with only one pharmacy, Knights on Feversham Lane. This pharmacy is already experiencing issues due to its heavy workload and it is unlikely to be able to cope on its own to serve the whole of the town and the town’s many visitors. This closure is going to create a public and patient risk.

I spent much of the pandemic picking up prescriptions and delivering them to people and have continued to occasionally perform this service since. Many residents will be unable to pick up prescriptions from Street, where there will undoubtedly be more pressure on services when people cannot get prescriptions from our last remaining pharmacy in Glastonbury. Street already has its own work pressures. Does NHS Somerset have a plan to ensure a smooth transition of services so that patients will not be impacted by the change?

Glastonbury has a large number intravenous drug users, and subsequently a lot of users who require methadone or other substitute opioids. The closure of the Boots pharmacy is going to be a risk to patients and the community as a whole.

The ICB has an action plan which presumes that people will be able to access online services. This is simply unacceptable for people in a rural area, where internet access is often poor. Many elderly people are unable to get online and would find navigating such a service extremely stressful and impossible to achieve. The online services themselves do not always work properly and this can cause additional stress and delays to people in urgent need of medication.

Furthermore, we recognise that human contact is also important. This is not just about the ability to easily access medication, but the pharmacists themselves are valuable professionals who can help to take pressure off doctors’ surgeries and hospitals by being a first port of call for many people. In fact, in an article on the ICB website, published on 23rd September 2022, Dr Bernie Marden, NHS Somerset’s Chief Medical Officer says that we should be “using our NHS Somerset GP Community Pharmacy Consultation Service which offers patients a same-day appointment for over 40 minor conditions at a community pharmacist of their choice, when they are offered an appointment for this service by their surgery.” This same-day, GP community pharmacy consultation service is intended to help us receive quality care and support for minor health conditions more quickly, through accessing care via our community pharmacist. However, this provision is not going to be possible if we either have no community pharmacist, or those we do have are too overworked to see anyone anyway.

With these facts in mind, we stress that Glastonbury has an urgent need for a pharmacy on the High Street, which can be easily accessed by both residents and visitors to enable people to access medication, other pharmaceutical services and most importantly, to be able to see people in person when they have concerns and need to access advice or reassurance. Public transport links are poor, many people do not drive and Glastonbury itself contains areas of deprivation. We need more robust services to meet the needs of our growing population. Therefore, we entreat the ICB to provide Glastonbury with another pharmacy as a matter of great urgency.

#saveourpharmacies #fightforourpharmacies #keepserviceslocal