We are residents of Lyall Bay and the surrounding suburbs, and we're urging Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand to reconsider Bargain Chemist Lyall Bay's application to dispense funded prescriptions. 

Health NZ declined Bargain Chemist’s application to dispense funded medicines

Bargain Chemist Lyall Bay applied to Health New Zealand for an Integrated Community Pharmacy Services Agreement, or ICPSA, the licence a pharmacy needs to dispense funded medicines, the kind most people get on prescription. That application has not been approved. 

Health NZ's stated reason was that it did not consider there was "sufficient evidence of need" for an additional funded pharmacy service in the area, and the decision was made without any real input from the people who actually use the pharmacy. 

We believe residents should have a say when decisions like this affect access to primary health care in their own community, and that hasn't happened here.

Since the decision, the pharmacy hasn't been able to fill funded prescriptions locally. Instead, medicine has to be couriered in from a store in town. For a lot of our community, especially older residents, parents with young kids, people with disabilities, and people who don't drive, that's simply not a workable substitute for a local pharmacy serving the area. 

Why this is a problem for our community 

Lyall Bay no longer has a pharmacy. Around 2,680 people live in the suburb, and none of them can currently get a funded prescription filled here.

Chemist Warehouse Kilbirnie, the obvious fallback, already has a reputation locally for long waits and being overloaded, especially for anyone with mobility issues or young kids in tow, or who simply can't afford to lose an hour of their day to a queue. It is also not an environment where people can have a private discussion with a pharmacist or easily access advice. The other option, Unichem Kilbirnie, is a small pharmacy with limited opening hours, and isn’t equipped to cater for those relying on support outside of working hours. 

This isn’t just a Lyall Bay problem. Lyall Bay and the surrounding southern suburbs are home to around 13,000 people, and that whole area now relies on a small handful of pharmacies to cover it.

General practice access here is already under pressure, which makes this worse. When people can't easily get in to see a GP, the local pharmacist often becomes the first and most accessible source of medical advice and care. Taking that away in Lyall Bay leaves a real gap.

It's also worth saying plainly: this is a pharmacy that works so well for this community. Bargain Chemist is New Zealand-owned, dispenses funded medicines free of charge, has incredible and knowledgeable staff, and offers the parking, hours and easy access that residents have said matter to them.

What we're asking for

We're asking Health New Zealand to:

- Approve Bargain Chemist Lyall Bay's ICPSA application so it can dispense funded prescriptions again

- Take proper account of travel distance, how stretched nearby pharmacies already are, and how hard it is to get a GP appointment here, when assessing applications like this one

- Make the approval process faster and more transparent for pharmacies trying to serve communities that clearly need them