Pressures Survey results are a clear warning to Government
Blog from Chief Executive Janet Morrison
Each year the results of our annual Pharmacy Pressures Survey make for emotional reading and 2026 has been no different. That just 14% of pharmacies in England are now profitable comes as no surprise to anyone working in the sector, but this is a truly shocking figure. It simply should not be the case that a sector working incredibly hard to deliver a core NHS service should have been cut so close to the bone in the name of ‘efficiencies’. Show me a more efficient part of the NHS!
And as the survey shows, pharmacies in all areas of the country are well beyond making any further efficiencies. Your costs are higher than ever before, you are all too frequently dispensing at a loss, medicines shortages remain a daily problem (for you and your patients) and 75% of you are losing money. Not breaking even – but losing money. That means dipping into personal savings and pensions, refinancing, struggling to pay staff and bills – and a phenomenal amount of stress added to the burden of an impossible day job.
That stress is evident in the personal accounts submitted to the survey and echoes what we have been hearing from pharmacy owners in our regional events. Pharmacists speak of their exhaustion and their worry about getting things wrong, with consequences for patients. They tell of the continuing verbal abuse from people as medicines supply problems persist, describing their work as a ‘nightmare’. And there are accounts of jobs that are making people ill, along with the devastating feelings of not being valued despite everything they do.
Yet despite all of this, pharmacies are delivering over and over again. As last week’s GP patient satisfaction survey showed – pharmacies are still topping the polls in terms of popularity, with 89% of people surveyed saying they had an overall good experience of using pharmacy services. This is a fantastic figure – ‘off the charts’ as one patient representative put it – and eclipses the results of other primary care services. Patients and the public are continuing to rely on, and to value, their local pharmacies. They know they will receive the help that they need, without any need for an appointment and in a hugely accessible location.
But all of this is at risk. That access, which so many people rely on and which helps to dampen pressure elsewhere in the NHS, will come to an end if a sustainable future is not mapped out for community pharmacies, and quickly. The Pressures Survey shows once again just how close many of you are to the brink, and this should be deeply worrying to Government – without pharmacies there is no functioning primary care, and no NHS.
We will be making this point and arguing for the urgent help you need loudly and clearly to Ministers and the NHS, and you can help us to do so by writing to your local MP about it. The survey results must be a clear warning: the time for Government to act is now.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our 2026 Pharmacy Pressures Survey.
