60% of pharmacy owners in Wales re-mortgaged their house or used personal savings to keep their doors open last year, a shocking new survey by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has found.
The survey also found that 4 in 10 pharmacies in Wales were not profitable in 2025, increasing the risk of pharmacy closures and cut backs to patients.
The NPA has warned that pharmacies in Wales have been left ‘clinging on by their fingertips’.
They have called on the Welsh Government to provide pharmacies in Wales with an urgent stabilisation payment, similar to what has bene offered to GPs, to prevent pharmacies from crumbling under the strain of stagnant funding and increasing costs.
The survey, filled in by over a third of pharmacies in Wales, also found that:
33% of pharmacies were unable to pay their wholesaler, who provides them with their prescription medication, on time or in full at some point last year.
No pharmacy surveyed by the NPA had sufficient funding to deliver their core services, as set out by their contact with NHS Wales.
89% of pharmacies have stopped offering some services last year to patients or started charging for them as they were no longer financially viable.
Only 4% felt confident they were in a financial position to be able to support the Welsh Government's Presgripsiwn Newydd (A New Prescription) which aims to expand pharmacy’s role to deliver more services to patients.
The NPA, who represent independent community pharmacies in Wales and across the UK, have urged the government to increase investment in community pharmacy or risk the Welsh Government’s New Prescription service ‘going up in smoke’.
Around 90% of an average pharmacy’s income in Wales is from delivering NHS services, including providing vital medication to patients and vaccination campaigns as well as urgent care to release pressure on other providers in line with Welsh Governments’ ambitions
Over the last 5 years, 32 pharmacies have shut permanently in Wales. Despite this being a slower rate of closure than that in England, the NPA have warned the government that pharmacies were sounding alarm bells for further losses of services to patients without action.
David Thomas, Welsh Board member for the National Pharmacy Association said:
“These shocking findings should sound major alarm bells to the Welsh government and will understandably cause concern to patients who depend on their local pharmacy.
“It is simply unsustainable and unfair to expect individual pharmacy owners to re-mortgage their house and dip into their pension pot to subsidise the cost of prescriptions and to keep their doors open for their patients.
“Pharmacies are hanging on by their fingertips and something has to change. Without urgent action, the government risks pharmacies closing for good and their New Prescription Service going up in smoke.
“To prevent this from happening, the government should step in and offer pharmacies a stabilisation payment, similar to recently offered to GP colleagues.
“Only through stabilisation and long term investment can pharmacies deliver the expansion in services for patients and take pressure away from others in the NHS."
Russell Goodway, Chief Executive at Community Pharmacy Wales, the organisation representing all community pharmacy owners in Wales, said:
“The findings of this poll closely mirror our own evidence and reinforce the very real financial pressures currently facing community pharmacies across Wales, regardless of size or ownership model.
"Community Pharmacy Wales has been in ongoing dialogue with the Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care since before Christmas, seeking to secure a recurring stabilisation payment. Such support is essential to prevent further deterioration and to safeguard the sustainability of the sector. We will continue to make a strong and evidence-based case for the additional resources that are urgently needed.”
