Lloyds Pharmacy located within Sainsbury’s supermarket in Newport is to close, it has been announced.
The company is shutting all of its 237 in-store branches this year in response to changing market conditions. It comes just 8 years after Lloyds Pharmacy bought the pharmacy network for a whopping £125million and less than a year after the chain was bought by Aurelius.
The closure will mean the loss of a conveniently located pharmacy for Islanders, which is close to St Mary’s Hospital. It is often the latest opening pharmacies on the Island.
There may be some hope on the horizon for the future of this pharmacy though as each individual branch will be put up for sale. This may attract offers from national or independent operators, which could potentially save the provision and scores of jobs too.
Kevin Birch, chief executive of Lloyds Pharmacy, has said:
“This decision has not been an easy one and we understand that our patients and customers may have questions about how the change will affect them.
“We would like to thank them for their continued support and assure them that we are committed to providing a smooth transition over the coming months.”
The closure of Lloyds Pharmacy at Sainsbury’s will leave just 3 other branches on the Isle of Wight; Pyle Street in Newport, Esplanade in Ryde and East Cowes Medical Centre, East Cowes.
This is what is called a 100 hour pharmacy, their contract with the NHS say they HAVE to open for a minimum of 100 hours per week. However they have discovered that they are unable to get pharmacists to work either “earlys” or “lates” and weekends to keep the pharmacy open.
This is not just a problem for Lloyds/Sainsburys, it is a UK Pharmacy wide problem. One might suggest that the current Government should have invested in training more pharmacists (and Doctors, Nurses etc), but we are where we are.
This should not result in people being unemployed it will mean that these professionals will move to other pharmacies on the island making sure that the remaining shops are more comprehensively manned, without sudden closures.
We’re just peasants. Should know out place, how dare we expect health care in the 21st century. Next the NHS will be sold off. Both the blue and red Tories have that one planned in the next five years.
It’s called privatisation through the back door.
GP surgery’s, pharmacies, NHS supply chain, NHS 111, most dentists and most labs are already private companies and have been for at least the last 40 years.
A very good service that will be lost especially the late opening hope someone else can take it over.
Come to are shop were bigger cheaper and better and have great staff , better then this bunch
But you don’t have a pharmacy
Were getting a new pharmacy installed just for you
Ur not the store manager ur a sad person pretending , come on do you think there message on here
But not a good command of the written word!
Hope the take over of Lloyds by new company isn’t going to start pushing more electronic distant contact bumph keep getting emails from them saying I can have an e-appointment for £25 should I wish. The writing maybe on the wall for NHS but hopefully the British Public will survive to fight any ideas of getting rid of the NHS. Anyone else looked up Aurelius. Makes interesting reading if you haven’t and more so for where they are based.
Scary company. Depressing reading.
Oh dear. It’s always so busy and the other’s are already oversubscribed. Let’s hope someone takes it over
I said hey you get off my cloud
And dancing behind movies screen
Give us all that rubbish really this is important
But who going to be there for my tooth
What a shame I really consider lying down
I lost one tooth in sainsburys please can u find it
Pretty soon we’ll all be scouring the hedgerows for plants to make herbal remedies.
Pyle Street is constantly on reduced hours or closed due to “staffing issues” according to the sign on the shop door so perhaps the Sainsburys staff can go there and at least that will be open full time to service the no doubt even longer queues.