Pharmacies slash weekend opening hours in funding crisis - see areas worst affected

Pharmacies are reducing their weekend opening times with someshutting completely as they face a funding crisis.

New analysis by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) shows one in six pharmaciesin England - around 1,600 stores - have cut opening hours on weekends. Eight per cent decided to shut entirely on Saturdays and Sundays in the last four years.

The NPA blames a lack of NHS funding and says reduced opening hours were forcing patients to travel long distances to get prescriptions or resort to A&E. It reports some patients have to drive for almost an hour to their nearest chemist.

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Olivier Picard, NPA chair, said: “This is yet more evidence that the pharmacy network in England is creaking at the seams after facing deep cuts over a number of years. Sadly the real losers are the millions of patients these pharmacies serve, particularly those in rural areas, who are forced to travel long distances or even go to hospital if they need a prescription or advice for a minor health issue on a Sunday or late at night.”

The Mirror is campaigning to save family chemists and stop the closures which are piling pressure on overstretched GPs. The NPA found 16,000 hours of pharmacy time on weekends has been lost in the last four years, with only 17% of pharmacies still open to patients on a Sunday.

Kent, Birmingham and Lancashire have seen some of the steepest drops in weekend opening, losing nearly 30% of weekend hours since 2022. Cornwall has seen the highest percentage drop in Sunday opening since 2022 with 34% fewer open compared to four years ago. This is followed by Oxfordshire and Chester and Cheshire West. The NPA reports of patients facing journeys of nearly an hour to reach their nearest pharmacy on a Sunday in some parts of Cornwall.

A previous survey by the NPA found 65% of pharmacies in England reported operating at a loss in 2025 despite receiving the first funding rise in years under Labour. The trade body which represents most independent community pharmacies in the UK says over 1,400 have now shut since 2016, with one in ten lost. It says closures mean the network of pharmacies is at its lowest in 20 years.

In the new analysis, Kent and Birmingham both saw 14 pharmacies stop opening on a Sunday since 2022. In Devon, pharmacies only operated one tenth of the opening hours on a Sunday compared to the average weekday. An average pharmacy in England was serving around 1,000 more patients than it did in 2017, when the previous government first made the decision to cut pharmacy budgets. This is an increase of a fifth.

The NPA says pharmacists are cutting back their opening hours on weekends in order to not close altogether, due to pressures on their budgets after a decade of underfunding. Labour delivered the first real funding increase for the pharmacy sector since 2014, investing £617 million over two years.

The Government is still preparing its funding offer for pharmacies for the next financial year. The NPA is calling for a sustained funding uplift that will stabilise the pharmacy network as well as reform of the “broken” contract between pharmacies and the NHS.

Olivier Picard added: “Pharmacists have huge potential to take away pressure from the rest of the health system but the reality is that they hanging on by their fingertips, raiding pension pots or remortgaging homes to stay open.

“Although we recognise the government took a step forwards last year, much of the uplift disappeared to cover increasing costs including National Insurance and National Living Wage contributions. Like the Government, we want to expand NHS services to patients but this can only happen with sustained and significant investment.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Community pharmacies are a vital front door to the NHS, which is why this government has provided them with the largest funding uplift of any part of the NHS over the last two years – reaching a total of £3.1 billion. We are currently consulting with Community Pharmacy England on funding arrangements for next year and we will continue to make sure hard-working pharmacists can offer patients more care closer to home as part of our 10 Year Health Plan.”